Telangana continues to witness suicides by the distressed and indebted farmers even as the State Assembly continued its fiery debate on the issue for the second consecutive day on Wednesday.
According to the reports, seven more farmers ended their lives in different parts of the State including two in Medak, the home district of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
The failure of crops due to the deficient rains and the debt burden was cited as the main reason for the fresh wave of suicides in which the Opposition parties allege more than 400 farmers have killed themselves over the last one year.
While members of the Opposition Congress, TDP, BJP and MIM lashed out at the TRS Government and demanded stringent action to prevent more suicides, including curbs on private money lenders, K Chandrasekhar Rao issued a fervent appeal to the farmers not to take extreme step as the Government and the entire State was behind them in this hour of crisis He said the Government had already waived off the loans of farmers.
“Fulfilling its promise the Government has already released `8000 crore towards the loan waiver”, he said. “The loan waiver scheme has benefited more than 36,00,000 farmers of Telangana”, he added.
Chief Minister said that he welcomes the observation of the Hyderabad High Court on the issue of farmers’ suicide. The court had directed the State Government to go to the roots of the problem and take action to solve the problems of farmers.
“This is not confined to Telangana. This is the problem of the entire country”, KCR said.
He attributed the serious agriculture crisis in Telangana to the historic reasons including serious betrayal with Telagnana under the united Andhra Pradesh State in matters of water allocation.