All possible being done, Telangana tells Hyderabad High Court
Government informed the court that it was deeply concerned about the suicides
Hyderabad: The TS government on Thursday claimed before the Hyderabad High Court that it was not shirking its responsibilities towards the welfare of the farming community.
The government said that it laid great trust on modern methods of cultivation to enhance the economic status of farmers and also their all-round progress.
The government filed a counter affidavit in a petition by the Vyavasaya Jana Chaitanya Samiti, seeking to direct the TS government to take preventive measures to arrest the suicides of financially distressed farmers in the state.
The government informed the court that it was deeply concerned about the suicides, which was an age-old phenomena and that it was aware of the fact that ongoing schemes were not enough to tackle the challenge.
The government said that the department of agriculture had taken up excessive awareness programmes to create awareness and to impart sufficient knowledge to the farmers regarding modern agriculture production techniques and ways to reduce cost of cultivation.
The court was informed that to mitigate the financial burden of the farmers and to encourage them to avail institutional credit, loans were made available to them at no interest or at lower interest rates under the Rythu Sri programme.
The government said that it had increased ex gratia to the victims’ families from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh besides waiving off crop loans up to Rs 1 lakh.
The court was told that based on media reports, about 154 farmers had committed suicide in September, 2015. A case study had been done by the government based on which the district joint directors of agriculture found that only 94 cases were genuinely agriculture related.
Verifying suicides, court told told
During verification of farmers suicides, the teams set up by Telangana state came across certain cases in Karimnagar and other districts wherein farmers who had committed suicides had done so due to debts arising from borrowing money for marriage of their children and education. Special counsel of the government S. Sharath Kumar said that they were yet to ascertain the final statistics of such cases, as verification is still on.
The government cited one case each in Warangal and Ranga Reddy districts where farmers had committed suicide after failing to repay money borrowed for children’s marriage. One case was cited in Ranga Reddy wherein a farmer took his life after failing to repay a loan taken for his child’s education.
Counsel for the Vyavasaya Jana Chaitanya Samiti Balaji Vadera said that there were several contradictions in the affidavit with regard to statistics of farmers’ suicides and also in implementing the Swaminathan Commission recommendations.
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