Date:22/11/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/11/22/stories/2007112262271100.htm

Other States - Maharashtra

Cotton farmers commit suicide

Arunkumar Bhatt

NAGPUR: Ten cotton growers have committed suicide in the Vidarbha region in Maharashtra during the last four days, even as the government claimed a major drop in the suicides and the Opposition disrupted the State legislature on the issue.

“Most of these farmers are young, in their thirties,” Kishore Tiwari, leader of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan, the organisation campaigning for a better deal for the farmers in distress, told The Hindu.

Six of the farmers are from Yavatmal district where the largest number of suicides has taken place; two are from Akola and one each from Nagpur and Gondia district.

This raises the number of suicides, since January 2007, to 1,056. The calendar year 2006 had registered 1,442 suicides.

Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh recently said that suicides had dropped by 40 per cent.

The claim was rejected outright by the activists and the Opposition alike.