Rs.10-lakh aid sought for kin

Warangal: Activists and leaders of the Telangana Praja Front (TPF) and other people’s organisations on Monday demanded the State government to immediately extend support to farmers.

The government should launch programmes to boost the morale of farmers, who were distressed by crop loss, power shortage and debts, the leaders demanded. They organised a rally from the Telangana Martyrs’ Memorial to the Collectorate followed by a demonstration.

Addressing the gathering, TPF district president B Rama Devi said farmers in the State had hoped that their problems would end in Telangana. But sadly the TRS government has been continuing the legacy of previous regimes and neglecting farmers. “As a result, 320 farmers committed suicide across the State so far. In the past two decades, about 25,000 farmers have ended their lives,” she stated.

Farmers’ deaths reveal the indifferent attitude of successive governments towards their problems. At least now, the government should address the agrarian crisis prevailing in the State, Rama Devi demanded.

She described farmer suicides as State murders and condemned Agriculture Minister P Srinivas Reddy’s comments that the media was exaggerating, depicting every death as suicide.

“This is a shameless statement by a Minister. He was demeaning farmer suicides, instead of consoling the families,” Rama Devi lamented.

The “distress levels among farmers aggravated as the government failed to give an assurance in finding solutions to their. The government must understand that crop loss, burden of debts and delay in implementing crop loan waiver were prompting them to end lives,” the TPF leader averred.

Telangana Rythanga Samithi leader M Narsimha Reddy pointed out that the State and Central governments, which welcome industrialists and provide them sops, are turning blind eye to distressed farmers.

The leaders wanted the government to announce Rs 10 lakh compensation to the family of each farmer who committed suicide.