Telangana govt in no hurry to set up agro-food clusters

​Hyderabad: The State government is sitting over a Central government communique asking the State government to identify agriculture clusters of land in Telangana to encourage agro-food processing clusters for more than two months. The Centre had urged the State government to identify at least 10,000 acres in each of these clusters and enquired from it as to how many food clusters could be established in Telangana.

The request had come at a time when the State government has been struggling to find suitable agriculture land for its Land Purchase Scheme (LPS) so that it can distribute three acres of agriculture land each to the members of Scheduled Castes. Despite best efforts made by the State government, it could so far pool only about 10,000 acres of land and distribute it to 4,007 beneficiaries during the last three years.

Furthermore, it had fixed a target of purchasing another 10,000 acres during the current financial year. However, the slow process of implementing the scheme due to scarcity of availability of land led to criticism from the Opposition parties which lashed out at the government over its failure to deliver its promise.

Given the present scenario, if land for agro-food processing clusters is identified, most of the clusters would go into the hands of only private players. This could adversely impact the land distribution scheme. Following this, a decision on this had been kept pending for the time being, the sources pointed out.