HYDERABAD, March 16: A Hari Conference has called upon the government to allot land to liberated peasants, stop privatisation of state land including Thari cattle farm and take back forest lands from influential landlords.

The conference organised on Saturday by the Green Rural Development Organisation at the press club demanded strict enforcement of the Agricultural Reforms Act 1977 in letter and spirit and withdrawal of all the exemptions incorporated in the act from time to time.

The conference urged the government to order a survey of Katcho, Kachho, Kohistan, Kachh, Thar and Thal areas and frame law banning the sale of injurious chemicals, pesticides and fertilisers and waive all the loans the peasants owed to landlords to help eliminate bonded labour.

The speakers called upon the government to get NICs of liberated peasants prepared on priority basis and register their names in voters’ lists and urged the government to stop sale of irrigation water to influential landlords.

They stressed that the government should make sure the big landlords did not cultivate more than 33 per cent of their total land to guarantee supply of water to the tail-end growers.

They demanded that the farmers should be given subsidy on seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, agricultural machinery, diesel and electricity used for operating tube-wells and announce support price for all crops.

The government should direct the sugar mills to start crushing season and make payment to cane growers strictly in accordance with its notification, they said.

They advised the government to declare all the areas under mealy bug attack as calamity-hit, regularise all the villages in rural and urban areas, make proper arrangements for health and education and clean drinking water in the villages and announce minimum wages for the farm workers.

The conference demanded that the tenancy tribunals and Hari courts should be made subordinate to judiciary and set up on the pattern of labour courts where peasants themselves or their representatives should be allowed to plead their cases.