The Kerala Cabinet on Wednesday decided to revise the rents payable by private plantations on land leased from government.
Briefing the media, Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan said that district collectors would be empowered to fix the rents at Rs. 1300 a hectare. While the public sector units were paying Rs. 1300 a hectare for government land leased to them, the private plantations paid only rates ranging from Rs. 3.70 a hectare to Rs. 12.35 a hectare.
Mr. Achuthanandan said that the Rules would be amended using the provision in the Kerala Grants and Leases (Modification of Rights) Act, 1980, that empowered the government to issue directives to the collectors on fixing the rent.
He recalled that moves to revise the rents from 1990 had not fructified for various reasons. (Increasing non-tax revenues by revising the lease rents is one of the Budget proposals for the current year. The proposal had been included in budgets several times in the past with no result.)
