The
Hindu: Mumbai: Saturday, June 22, 2019.
610
deaths reported in Maharashtra between January and March this year
Despite
spending over ₹19,000 crore on farm loan waiver, a total of 12,021 farmers have
died in the State due to suicide between 2015 and 2018, the government said in
Assembly on Friday.
In
a written reply, Relief and Rehabilitation Minister Subhash Deshmukh further
admitted that the first three months of this year saw 610 deaths of farmers.
Replying
to the discussion on the Governor’s address, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis
had on Thursday told the House that over 50 lakh farmers would benefit from the
loan waiver scheme and ₹24,000 crore will be spent for this. Of the total
number, 43.32 lakh farmers have actually received benefits worth ₹19,000 crore.
Despite
the loan waiver scheme and increasing expenditure on the agriculture sector,
the farmer deaths in the state have not stopped. As per Mr. Deshmukh’s reply,
out of 12,021 farmer suicides, a total of 6,888 cases qualified for
compensation as per the norms. “Out of these, kin of farmers in 6,845 cases
have been paid ₹1 lakh aid,” said the reply.
In
2019, out of 610 cases, till now only 192 cases are eligible for compensation,
while 96 were declared ineligible. “Rest 323 cases are pending for inquiry,”
said the miniser.
Mr.
Deshmukh said that norms to decide whether the person committing suicide was a
farmer were changed in 2006 to give compensation to the deceased. “The person
committed suicide is considered a farmer, even if any person in the family has
a name on farmland documents. Also the deceased person is considered eligible
for compensation in case the person or any member of the family has availed
loan from nationalised or cooperative banks, cooperative credit societies or
licensed money lenders,” it added.
In
January 2019, Jeetendra Ghatge, a social activist had filed an application
under the Right to Information Act (RTI) seeking details of farmers who
committed suicides from year 2014 to 2018.
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