Hyderabad: TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on Tuesday said that the latest National Crime Records Bureau report has exposed the failure of TRS government in preventing farmer suicides in the state and also proved that its policies were responsible for the agrarian crisis in the state.
“For the second consecutive year, TS is at second position in the country in the number farmer suicides. This clearly shows that the state government tried to downplay farmers’ suicides,” Mr Reddy said.
Quoting Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2015 statistics that were released by the NCRB on Monday, he said as many as 1,400 farmers, including 42 agricultural workers, in TS committed suicide in 2015.
The figure was 1,347 (including 449 agricultural workers) in 2014. “There has been a 33 percent increase in the number of farmers/cultivators who committed suicide,” he said.
Mr Reddy said that of the 1,358 farmers, as many as 632 or 46.5 per cent committed suicide due to bankruptcy or indebtedness. TS also tops the list of female farmer / cultivator suicides accounting for 34.7 per cent of the total cases in the country.
“Congress has been warning of this situation since long. These suicides could have been prevented if the TRS government had honoured its election promise of waiving crop loans in one go. Debt-ridden farmers who voted for the TRS in last elections had expected complete waiver of their crop loans, but lost hope after the government split the loan waiver amount into several instalments. Congress repeatedly sought total clearance of crop loan waiver dues. However, the Chief Minister ignored our appeals and allowed the situation to deteriorate. Consequently, a farmer committed suicide throughout 2014 and 2015 every 6-8 hours,” Mr Reddy said, adding that he feared that the figures pertaining to 2016 might be even more shocking.
He pointed out that in his written reply given on December 26, 2016, Deputy Chief Minister Mahmood Ali denied suicides by drought-hit farmers of TS.
“By not accepting the statistics, the government would be committing the dual sin of denying ex-gratia of '6 lakh to the needy and other help to the affected families under the provisions of GO 421,” he said.
