Subsidy surrender plea gets poor response

​Mahbubnagar: The State government’s appeal to big farmers to give up voluntarily input subsidy, being given by the government to the agriculturists, has evoked lukewarm response. The legislators and Members of Parliament, however, have taken the lead and announced that they would voluntarily given up input subsidy, intended to help the small and marginal farmers.  

The government appealed to the big farmers to voluntarily give up subsidy and deposit the money meant for them in Raythu Samanvaya Samithi corpus fund. There are a large number of big farmers whose landholdings are more than 10 acres in the district. They are well off. However, so far no one has come forward to give up subsidy. There are 562 villages and 3.35 lakh farmers who are eligible to get the input capital. The government has decided to pay input subsidy through two cheques, so that they would not face trouble for encashing them. 

“For farmers with large extent of land who are getting more input capital, we have decided to give first cheque for Rs. 49,900 and for remining amount second cheques will be given. There are over 4,960 rich farmers in Mahbubnagar. As many as 7,203 farmers are holding land above 10 acres. Overall, we are distributing  39,920 cheques to 3,34,958 lakh farmers in Mahbubnagar,” said a senior official responsible for Raitu bhadu Scheme in the district. 

However, he said till now no farmers came forward to give up the benefits of Rythu Bandhu scheme. Chief Minister K Chandrashekar said those, who voluntarily give up benefits under the scheme can deposit the money in Rythu Samanvya Samith Corpus fund for the benefit of farmers. The Chief Minister said he was depositing the money given to him under the scheme in the corpus fund.