BHUBANESWAR: As a majority of land owners are unwilling to certify sharecroppers by providing land details for paddy procurement registration, the State Government has authorised Sarpanchs to assist the tenant farmers.
Initiating the process for online registration of farmers for paddy procurement during the ensuing kharif marketing season (KMS) which will start from November 1, the Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department has directed the Registrar of Cooperative Societies and all Collectors to ensure that sharecroppers are not deprived of the benefit of minimum support price (MSP).
Sharecroppers willing to sell their surplus paddy to Government-identified mandis (market yards) or Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS) are required to register their names under the Paddy Procurement Automation System (P-PAS).
The tenant farmers, who are called as ‘Bhagachasi’, are required to obtain consent letters from the land owners and provide bank details for online registration ahead of every procurement season (kharif and rabi).
“In the event of such consent letter is not forthcoming from a landowner, the sharecropper may approach the Sarpanch concerned who may certify as to the fact of sharecropping with required land details,” said a circular issued by Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Secretary VV Yadav.
Such certificate will be taken into account by the Secretary of PACS for registration of sharecroppers in the online portal to enable him sell paddy to the Government, he added.
The process of farmers’ registration and its renewal for the ensuing kharif season starts from July 15 and will continue till September 15. In case of conflicting claims over the same plot of land, the online system will veto the claims if the combined cultivated area of all the applicant farmers exceeds the total area of the plot as shown in the record of rights (RoR), it said.
Over 10 lakh farmers, including 73,537 sharecroppers, had registered with as many as 2,567 PACS last year to sell their paddy. The online registration of farmers, which started from 2014-15 KMS, has become a well established mechanism for preparation of an authenticated database of farmers.
