Hyderabad, October 17: Sympathising with the tenant farmers whose crops have been damaged in the floods, the government has decided to pay them compensation in the form of cash or input subsidy with the consent of the owners of the landholdings.
Collectors of the flood-ravaged Kurnool, Mahabubnagar, Krishna, Guntur and Naglonda districts have been asked to use MROs and sarpanches to identify these tenants through a fool-proof enumeration and get no-objection certificates from land owners for ensuring the compensation only to the former without legal problems.
Chief Minister K. Rosaiah instructed the Collectors at a video-conference on the flood-relief works on Friday to act as facilitators to help the tenants, the real tillers who invested their hard-earned money to raise crops.
The NOCs from the owners were a legal necessity as they held the title-deeds.
Mr. Rosaiah spoke highly about Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, saying that he was the one who focussed on tenants and enhanced scale of compensation under different heads against the losses caused by calamities.
A bill would be introduced to overcome the likely legal hurdles.
Agriculture Minister N. Raghuveera Reddy later said discussions would be held with State Level Bankers’ Committee to advance loans to the flood-affected tenants to enable them to raise alternative crops.
The Chief Minister hoped that the Centre would provide more aid, apart from the Rs. 1,000 crore, recalling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s advice to him to send reports to claim funds under various Central schemes such as JNNURRM.
Mr. Rosaiah said as the affected families leaving relief camps would not have a normal situation at home, a second instalment of the ration for a month would be given to them on November 1, consisting of 20 kg rice, five litres of kerosene, two kg each of red gram dal and palm oil.
Interior places
He asked the Collectors to see that the relief material reached interior places also and wanted them to use police, if necessary, if affected families at a village tried to grab away the entire truck load of relief material before the vehicle reached an interior place. He appealed to the donors to send their relief material to the Exhibition Grounds in Hyderabad.
-Agencies