Revenue records of agricultural lands to be verified: C Parthasarathi

Hyderabad: Nearly 30 lakh acres of agricultural land that figures in revenue records will be excluded from farm sop of Rs 8,000 per acre per year.

Agriculture secretary C. Parthasarathi held a video conference on Monday with the officials from all districts. He directed the officials to verify revenue records of agricultural lands and to conduct field-level inspection of each agricultural land to detect whether cultivation is being done.

“Give the data of uncultivated lands to the government and they will be excluded from farmers’ sop. Only cultivable lands will get Rs 8,000 per acre per year sop. Based on this data, the government will prepare Agricultural Budget for 2018-19 and sanction the required funds,” he said.

He asked the officials of the agricultural department to coordinate with revenue department staff during inspections.

“The agriculture extension officers and village revenue officers should jointly inspect lands and provide accurate data on cultivable land,” Mr Parthasarathi said.

In mid 2017, the agricultural department had conducted ground-level survey to find out the number of farmers doing agriculture and calculated the extent of lands suitable for cultivation. It was found that 55 lakh farmers were cultivating in 1.25 crore acres of agricultural land. Of them, only 45 lakh farmers have error-free pattadar passbooks and they will be eligible to claim the Rs 8,000 per acre sop per year.

However, the land records purification drive taken up by the revenue department found out that there were 1.62 crore acres of agricultural land in the state. Thus there is a mismatch of around 37 lakh acres.

With this, the government directed the agricultural department to take up inspection with revenue officials to detect cultivated area.