The Government will complete soil testing of one crore acres of agriculture land in the State within two years and Central Government has been requested to sanction more soil health laboratories.
Agriculture Minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy revealed this in the Legislative Council on Thursday responding to questions from members during a short discussion on Agriculture. Mr. Reddy said that all the 55 lakh holdings will be tested within two years.
The Government had collected five lakh soil samples in 2015-16 and after analysing 21.63 soil health cards were distributed to farmers. During 2016-17, the target is set for 5.34 lakhs and of this 4.14 lakh samples were collected and 1.23 lakh soil health cards were distributed.
On farmers getting cheated by sellers with spurious seeds, he said that the Government had cancelled 135 dealer licenses, 9 centralised seed licenses apart from booking 17 criminal cases. Five company personnel had been jailed under the PD Act which was never witnessed in the State’s history. In addition, Rs. 1.57 crore compensation was arranged to 2,556 farmers from the companies.
Hailing the Central Government’s Pradhana Mantri Phasal Bhim Yojana, he said that it helped farmers cover losses as insurance was being given with village taken as a unit. However, the Telangana Government had written to the Central Government to consider farmer as a unit in implementing Insurance schemes.
Mr. Reddy said that the Government was keen on farm mechanisation and inputs were being supplied at 100 per cent subsidy for the SC and ST farmers and 50 per cent to others. However, the response failed to satisfy the Congress members who staged a walk out alleging that the Government was doing little on the ground to help the farmers.
Bharatiya Janata Party member N. Ramachander Rao, Congress member P. Sudhakar Reddy and TRS member Rajeshwar Reddy were among others who participated in the discussion.
Earlier, during the Question Hour Mohd. Ali Shabbir, Leader of Opposition alleged that step- motherly treatment was meted out to minorities and pointed out that hardly 30 per cent of the budgeted sum of Rs. 1,200 crore was spent till December. He said that 1,67,000 applications from minority entrepreneurs were pending with the Government.
He said that 50,000 applications under the Shadi Mubarak scheme were pending as of date and the Government had released only Rs. 19.79 crore out of the budgeted Rs. 150 crore. With regard to the RTF scholarships for Muslim youth he said that though Rs. 238 crore was allocated only Rs. 66 crore had been released, while in the case of MTF scholarships for minority students not a single paisa was released although Rs. 50 crore is budgeted.
Deputy Chief Minister Mahmood Ali admitted that applications were pending and the funds would be released.
