By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, July 8, 2016 : Odisha government will bring a new bill in the upcoming monsoon session of the Assembly to safeguard the interests of the sharecroppers.

An inter-ministerial panel of the state government on Friday decided to bring a new law to provide compensation in the event of crop loss, input subsidy, insurance cover, relief and other benefits to sharecroppers which were hitherto unavailable to them under the existing law.

“As per the decision taken at the meeting, an agreement will be inked between the landlord and the sharecropper in the presence of the local Revenue Inspector (RI). The RI and the local tehsildar will each keep a copy of the signed agreement. The decision of the inter-ministerial committee will be placed before the Cabinet for its approval. We have planned to place the bill before the Assembly for its approval during the forthcoming monsoon session,” state revenue minister Bijayashree Routray, told media persons after the inter-ministerial committee meeting.

The state is passing through a tremendous crisis in its agrarian sector with huge crop losses, exorbitant rise in input costs of agriculture and incidences of suicide by farmers in different parts. In spite of demand from many quarters for a long time, the sharecroppers are not being recognised as farmers to avail a host of benefits including the compensation for natural calamities such as drought and disaster provided by the Government.

The institutional credit facilities available by Regional Rural Banks and farmer cooperatives are availed by the land owning farmers, but not by the sharecroppers. Even it has been difficult for the sharecroppers to sell their paddy in Government Mandis where the farmers have to identify themselves as land owners.

For legal reason, sharecroppers are not officially recognised and thus the sharecroppers do not exist but everybody knows it that about more than 60 per cent of the state’s our farmers are sharecroppers. There are States such as Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and West Bengal where the sharecroppers have some kind of rights and security ensured in agriculture sector.

With the passage of the proposed Bill in the state Assembly, sharecroppers will have legal right to take benefits of the government programmes.