Supreme Court notice to Centre on farmer suicides
The NGO had collected detailed information about the reasons that led to suicides by 41 farmers.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday sought response of the Centre and all states on an NGO’s allegation that drought and debt drove more than 600 farmers to commit suicide in Gujarat alone between 2003 and 2012, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister.
A bench of Chief Justice J.S. Khehar and Justice N.V. Ramana issued not-ice and sought the Centre response to whether there is any policy on crop loans when there is a natural calamity. The bench also wanted the Reserve Bank of India to indicate the policy on loan waiver in such situations.
The notice was issued on a petition filed by Mallika Sarabhai-founded NGO “Citizens Resource and Action Initiative”, which challenged the Gujarat high court’s decision not to intervene in the case on the ground that farmers’ relief and rehabilitation was a state policy matter.
The court in 2014 had issued notice only to Gujarat. During the resumed hearing, senior counsel Colin Gonsalves pointed out that there is no policy regarding loan waiver in case of crop loss due to natural calamities and farmers are left with only crop insurance.
The NGO said its coordinator, Bharat Sinh Jhala, had made a series of RTI queries forcing the Gujarat government to disclose that from 2003 till 2007, as many as 498 farmers committed suicide. In response to another RTI query, the state informed that between 2008 and 2012, another 121 farmers committed suicide, taking the number of officially acknowledged farmers’ suicides to 619.
Mr Jhala said he had written to the chief minister and chief secretary of Gujarat on May 25, 2013, requesting financial assistance to the kin of farmers who committed suicide due to crop failure.
The NGO had collected detailed information about the reasons that led to suicides by 41 farmers. The reasons were “increasing amount of loan, cotton crop failure due to no rain, bad economic situation, inability to pay instalments for loans taken for tractor, seeds and other agricultural implements.
The petitioner said among the suicides, the most striking incident was the mass suicide on April 8, 2013, by the entire family of Rathilal Jeevabai Maladiya of Daldi village in Rajkot district.
“The family of five jumped in front of a running train. Three of them died on the spot and other two were seriously injured,” it said and urged apex court’s intervention to save the lives of farmers.