Post News Network
Bhubaneswar: In the wake of rising cases of farmers committing suicide, the state government has decided to bring a new law this year to provide significant benefits to the sharecroppers, said revenue and disaster management minister Bijayshree Routray here Sunday.
“We will bring a new policy to recognise the rights of the sharecroppers. The new law will enable sharecroppers to get bank loans, government subsidies and other benefits being provided to farmers,” said the minister.
Sources said the Orissa Land Reforms Act, 1965, under which the government is currently providing various kinds of support to farmers, is going to be amended to pave the way for the new policy.
The amendments would require the landowners to enter into agreements with the sharecroppers in the presence of tehsildars. The agreements, among other things, will specify the rights of the landowners and the sharecroppers on the land and its produce. Agriculture input subsidies would be disbursed to the sharecroppers accordingly, said sources.
An expert committee of National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, which is working on land reforms and is headed by T Haque, is going to organise a national consultation on land tenure reforms in New Delhi January 8. A senior official from the state government would participate in the meeting.
The committee had held a state-level consultation here on the subject November 4. Haque had stated that one of the major reasons behind extreme incidents like farmers’ suicides has been the “absence of their documented rights to access and control land” and the need for land tenure reform in the state to protect those rights. The committee is working to prepare a model land leasing law in consultation with different state governments, said sources.
