(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) NHRC sends notice to state as over 100 farmers end life over debt.
Hyderabad: In a major embarrassment to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government in Telangana the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued a notice to the state government seeking a report on the alleged suicide committed by over 100 farmers in the past five months.
The NHRC which has sought a report from the chief secretary with regard to the farmers’ suicides within two weeks issued the notice taking suo motu cognizance of media reports.
“Reportedly thousands of farmers are caught in a vicious cycle of debts due to low yields or total crop failure and there is constant pressure from moneylenders and when it does not rain and crops start failing all they can think of is escaping it by taking their own lives” the NHRC said in its notice. The commission quoting media reports pointed out that the Telangana government had announced a scheme of waiver of loans to farmers but an order issued by it on August 13 stated that the scheme covered only institutional loans and not loans from non-institutional sources.
Farmers’ suicides in Telangana was one of the main issues on which the TRS successfully led the separate statehood movement stating that successive governments had failed to address the plight of farmers in the past leading to suicides.
The TRS government has been consistently denying reports of farmers’ suicides of this magnitude stating that a probe had been ordered by the government and it was yet to be completed.
Opposition parties in the new State including the Congress and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) have been alleging that over 200 farmers had committed suicide in the State since the TRS came to power in June. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao stating that it was wrong to say that hundreds of farmers had committed suicide following failure of crops said: “According to preliminary reports received from the districts only a few suicide incidents involving farmers had occurred.
The Chief Secretary is investigating all cases of farmers’ suicide and he will be submitting a report at the earliest following which we will give compensation of up to Rs150000 the families of suicide victims. Right now we don’t have the actual figures.”
Meanwhile Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma has instructed the District Collectors of all the districts in the State to inquire into the suicide cases.
Officials will visit all the affected families and gather information from them on the reasons that led to the suicide of farmers in their families.
The TRS government which had promised the crop loan waiver scheme has only paid 25 per cent of the total Rs170 billion arrears so far besides paying another Rs 4 billion towards input subsidy that had been pending for three years sources said.
There are however complaints that the farmers are yet to receive fresh loans as the banks are refusing loans on grounds that they were not paid the total arrears by the government.
Minister for Agriculture Pocharam Srinivas Reddy stating that the opposition parties were projecting all suicides as farmers’ suicides only to tarnish the image of the TRS government said: “There is no truth in this. We have inquired with local officials who said that not all deaths were farmers’ suicides. It’s also wrong to say that the banks are not issuing fresh loans due to loan arrears.”
“We have records to prove that the banks have sanctioned fresh loans of nearly Rs80 billion so far” he said.
newskhaleejtimes.com
For more news from Khaleej Times follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes and on Twitter at khaleejtimes
Follow khaleejtimes ->
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.