Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Monday expressed its anger at petitioners who had shown some farmers, who were alive, as dead in their lists submitted with regard to farmers’ suicides in Telangana.
A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice P. Naveen Rao was dealing with a batch of petitions filed separately by the Vyavasaya Jana Chaitanaya Samiti, Mr Pakala Srihari Rao, Professor Kodandaram, Mr D. Narasimha Reddy and others, challenging the inaction of the state governments in curbing farmers suicides in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
Mr Sharath Kumar, special counsel for Telangana, submitted that the petitioners had submitted a list of 345 cases of suicides and after enquiry, officials had paid compensation for 79 cases as they were proven to be genuine farm-related suicides.
He submitted that during the inquiry it was also revealed that six of the farmers who were listed as dead by the petitioners were alive, the whereabouts of one of the farmers was not known, and 37 names had been repeated in the list.
Mr Sharath Kumar said that 188 cases were rejected by the enquiry committees at the district level as they were not farm-related suicides; many had committed suicide as they were unable to repay loans taken for studies and marriages of their children.
While stating that the issue of compensating families of farmers who had committed suicides unable to repay loans taken for activities other than farm-related would be consider later, the bench asked counsel for the state government to place before the Hyderabad High Court the reasons for suicide in each of the cases and also the reasons for rejecting compensation within two weeks.
