ST farmers in Telangana apprehensive over Congress Govt’s Indira Soura Giri Jala Vikasam

CM A Revanth Reddy, whose recent outbursts on the State's finances and fund crunch is also another worrying factor for the farmers, is expected to launch the Indira Soura Giri Jala Vikasam scheme on Monday

Hyderabad: Considering the partial implementation of several existing schemes and failure to ground many others, there are apprehensions among Scheduled Tribe (ST) farmers over the effective implementation of the proposed Indira Soura Giri Jala Vikasam scheme.

Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, whose recent outbursts on the State’s finances and fund crunch is also another worrying factor for the farmers, is expected to launch the Indira Soura Giri Jala Vikasam scheme on Monday. Under the scheme, the government aims for comprehensive development of Recognition of Forest Rights (RoFR) lands by providing solar pump sets (off-grid) based irrigation facilities to the ST farmers.

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For this, the State government announced the scheme with a budget outlay of Rs.12,600 crore with a unit cost of Rs.6 lakh in a phased manner for five years beginning from the 2025-26 financial year. However, as the Congress government has failed to disburse assistance to many farmers under Rythu Bharosa and landless labourers under Atmeeya Bharosa, many ryots are apprehensive about the implementation of the new scheme.

This apart, there have been complaints from elected public representatives over the forest department denying permission to dig borewells, operating tractors and imposing other restrictions. All these issues were raised by Congress MLAs themselves in the Assembly last December. Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy admitted that such issues were prevailing in about 35 constituencies.

The MLAs appealed to the State government to conduct a joint survey involving Revenue and Forest departments and demarcate the podu lands. However, the exercise has not been taken up so far.

Meanwhile, apart from boundary issues, the forest department is worried about the possibilities of man-animal conflict.

As ST farmers were depending on rains for cultivating lands, water availability was limited to a few seasons. Once solar pump sets were provided in the podu lands, sufficient water would be available even during summer season. This could trigger more man-animal conflicts as wild animals try to quench their thirst in the fields, a senior official opined.

In addition to this, availability of funds was another challenge for the implementation of the scheme. Under the RoFR Act, the State government provided title deeds to 2.30 lakh ST farmers covering nearly 6.69 lakh acres. Of these, 2.10 lakh farmers have been identified under the scheme covering six lakh acres for provision of solar pump set based irrigation facility on 100 per cent subsidy basis on saturation mode.

Accordingly, the Tribal Welfare department has been entrusted with the task of implementing the scheme. In the current financial year, 10,000 farmers are likely to get benefited covering 27,184 acres with a cost of Rs.600 crore. The assistance would be extended to farmers cultivating horticulture crops, especially fruit bearing saplings.

The State government releases these funds through Scheduled Tribes Special Development Fund (STSDF). The government also intends to make use of the Rs.1, 317 crore, which were unutilized under the SC/ ST Sub-Plan Law.

The District administration would have to involve ground water, forest, revenue and horticulture to conduct site identification for panel installation, verification of pattas, geologists for pump sets capacity (5 hp or 7.5 hp) and all these details have to be uploaded online, said an official from ST welfare department.

On the provision of pump sets, tenders would be floated to identify an agency.