Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today gave his nod to amend Punjab Tenancy Act, 1887, whereby formula for determining the rental value of the land will be adopted as per market based land rent.
This move will come as major reprieve for farmers particularly tenants tilling the land as they will get remunerative Minimum Support Price (MSP).
The Chief Minister had already taken up this issue with the Union Ministry of Agriculture, emphasising for the need to evolve a methodological procedure to determine MSP, said an official release.
He had apprised the Centre that the provision in the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act, 1953 to limit the land rent upto one third of value of the produce was made to protect the rights of the tenants and was no more relevant in view of abolition of tenancy.
In the light of this, the Chief Minister had given the nod to amend the said Act to provide for market based land rent on actual basis keeping in view the recommendations of state Agriculture department, which had been duly forwarded to the Revenue department for amending the Act.
The Chief Minister pleaded that this amendment had become all the more important in the present context because the earlier provisions under the law were "unrealistic" and denied the right of remunerative MSP to farmers.
He hoped with this amended, the farmers especially the tenants would be "richly" benefitted as the MSP would now be calculated on the basis of actual market rent to be determined by the Punjab Agriculture University (PAU).
Punjab farmers have been demanding a review of the procedure to fix the MSP to make it remunerative and thereby improve the viability of farming.
Pertinently, Punjab with 1.53 per cent of the geographical area of the country produces around 20 per cent of wheat, 10 per cent of rice and 10 per cent of cotton production of the country.
