The Andhra Pradesh government has issued an ordinance providing basic rights to tenant farmers enabling them to avail of crop loans apart from input subsidies offered by it. The decision will benefit 2.6 million tenant farmers, who have been denied crop loans and other sops from banks and government agencies as they do not possess any legal sanction on the land they cultivate.
Under the AP Land Licensed Cultivators Ordinance 2011, the state government will issue identity proof while certifying them as tenant farmers based on which banks have to sanction crop loans to these people hereafter. Similarly, they are eligible to claim any benefit, which the other farmers are entitled to, including compensation for crop damages and input subsidies from the government.
Tenant farming is mostly an unwritten contract between the cultivator and the owner of the land through which the land is allowed to cultivate in return to a lumpsum amount or crop sharing.
Though the government had proposed to bring in a legislation in this respect during the Budget sessions of the Assembly early this year, it could not get it through owing to constant disruptions of the proceedings by Telangana supporters and Opposition parties.
