NITI Aayaog: KCR Seeks Incentives for States

Telangana Chief Minister, K Chandrasekhar Rao, here on Sunday sought tax incentives for fast-growing States if not additional funds, to encourage them to do a good job while seeking devolution of more sectors to the States such as health, urban development, agriculture and rural development which could be better handled by the States.

Addressing the NITI Aayog meeting today he said further focus on agriculture and allied activities as an integrated sector and dairy, poultry, goat and sheep rearing, and fisheries must be made and the sectors must be exempted from income tax. As a part of the initiatives for doubling the income of farmers, MGNREGA funds should be tagged to agriculture with 50% contribution from farmers to reduce the cost of their investment, he said.

Explaining the benefits of the 'Rythu Bandhu' Scheme launched by his Government, KCR said by providing Rs 4,000 per acre per crop as agriculture input insistence, more than 98 per cent small and marginal farmers of the State their lives had been transformed. The scheme also envisaged a 'give it up' provision for farmers who would like to surrender their cheques. It would make sense to cover all farmers under such beneficial schemes instead of screening some out, he advised the Centre.

One important point in farm reforms was to initiate a system that would provide clear title records of the land, he said explaining the exercise that his Government had launched. He also explained the 'Rythu Bhima Yojana' to be launched for farmers insuring each farmer for Rs 5 lakh with the State Government paying the premium cost of Rs 1,000 per annum. Integrating and mutation process in a seamless manner to develop a robust mechanism for hassle free land transactions in rural areas was also explained by him. The same method could be used for urban properties too, he added.

He also explained methods for completing mega irrigation projects without time and cost overruns citing Kaleshwaram project example. The State had constructed 356 agricultural godowns in the past three years with a storage capacity of 18.30 lakh MTs at a cost of Rs 1,050 crore in addition to 170 godowns already existing.

Such measures to mitigate the troubles of farmers and other segments of the society must be encouraged and welcomed by the Centre so that all people benefit, he advised.

Highlighting that the country was facing lots of challenges in the areas of external affairs, defence and macro-economic and global issues, he said in the changing global scenario, Centre should continue to give due attention to those issues and at the same time leave more space to the states in doing work in such sectors as health, education, urban development, agriculture and rural development and also remove the rigidness of certain centrally sponsored schemes that curtail the initiatives of the state government.