HYDERABAD: Terming farmers’ suicides as an indisputable fact, a division bench of the High Court on Tuesday issued notices to the Centre, AP and Telangana governments, RBI, NABARD and other authorities concerned to respond to a PIL which complained that the governments concerned had failed to take adequate steps to prevent farmers’ suicides.
The bench of acting chief justice Ramesh Ranganathan and justice Shameem Akther was dealing with a PIL filed by K Sivarama Reddy, a farmer of Tullur mandal in Guntur, AP, seeking directions to both the state governments to forthwith implement the recommendations of Swaminathan committee, to immediately waive farm loans to prevent further suicides, to frame guidelines to release loan components to all the genuine farmers and to initiate civil and criminal proceedings against all the manufacturers and suppliers of fake and spurious seeds.
Reddy, who argued the case as a party-in-person, pointed that chilli farmers were now left in lurch with no support price mechanism. The farmer was unable to realise even half of production cost due to fall in per quintal price.
Referring to crop loans, he alleged that the governments and politicos had failed to give an assurance to farmers that they would make the latter free from debt burden and also failed to appeal to them not to resort to commit suicides.
Migration of farmers and agricultural labourer has become a regular scene. Besides, ministers use the market yards as their fiefdoms instead of converting them as a place to support the farmers.
The petitioner alleged evasion of repayment of about ` 6 lakh crore business and industrial loans availed by big people and said banks failed to recover the loans. But, on the other hand, bank authorities take coercive steps in respect of small farmers.
While posting the matter to June, the bench directed the registry to tag the present case with similar petitions pending before the court.