Second phase of land records rectification soon.

As the first phase of land record purification and rectification is set to close on Sunday, the State government is gearing up to launch the second phase to clear the lands that are locked in disputes.

The government has declared as clear 92 per cent of land accounts in 10,806 villages of 568 mandals spread across the State in the first phase. In the process, officials were deputed to camp in villages to verify the land records through grama sabhas to ensure that fool-proof pattadar passbooks with adequate security features were issued to farmers in the new year.

The programme initiated to put an end to long pending litigations witnessed processing of 11.19 lakh sada bainamas accounting to 15.68 lakh survey numbers for regularisation. The land record purification was one of the key exercises launched by the government during the year, ahead of launching the ambitious scheme providing ₹8,000 - ₹4,000 an acre each during Kharif and Rabi - as input assistance to farmers.

The government had initiated several programmes during the year, some of them billed as the first in the country, covering all sections. Process had been initiated for constituting the farmers’ coordination committees at village, mandal, district and State levels for effective monitoring of activities in agriculture and allied sectors and these committees would be entrusted the responsibility of overseeing the effective reach of the input assistance assured by the government to the last mile.

The farmers’ committees would also supervise market operations to ensure minimum support price to farmers as announced by the governments from time to time. The committees would intervene and procure the agriculture produce at times when the market conditions turn volatile not fetching anticipated returns to the farmers. The stock thus procured would be stocked and sold as and when the remunerative price is assured to the farmers.

In addition, the government had also brought about significant change in the constitution of market committees putting in place the rule of reservation in the election of members so that poor and marginalised sections were not left out. And it was decided to appoint an agriculture extension officer to effectively guide clusters of farmers numbering 5,000 each in the cropping related issues.

While the emphasis continued on the agriculture sector during the year, the government had given equal importance to the related sectors by announcing distribution of sheep and rams to Yadavas and sub-castes at subsidised prices. Adequate care had been taken at the same time to ensure that mobile veterinary clinics were deployed to address the cattle health related issues while the ambitious programme to enhance fish production multi-fold catering to the local needs as well as providing incomes to fishermen community had been launched.

Special development fund was announced for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and an exclusive corporation for the most backward classes created with a corpus fund of ₹1,000 crore while MLAs were given ₹3 crore each as constituency development fund. Subsidy had also been announced for yarn and chemicals in the interest of powerloom and handloom workers in addition to setting aside ₹1,200 crore in the State budget towards the welfare of the weavers’ community.

This apart, the government, for the first time, distributed 25 per cent of the profit earned by public sector miner Singareni Collieries Company Limited as bonus to its workers. Another significant announcement was about KCR kits, the health kits to pregnant women as part of the welfare measures.

THE HINDU