The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : TDP releases `list' of deceased ryots

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 22, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

TDP releases `list' of deceased ryots

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, NOV. 21. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on Sunday released a detailed list of 1,825 farmers who had committed suicide during the last six months of the Congress rule, and claimed that 177 more, including handloom weavers, had died of starvation.

Addressing a press conference, Nagam Janardhan Reddy, Deputy Leader of Telugu Desam Legislature Party (TDLP), and Kodela Sivaprasada Rao, former Minister, said, going by the pace at which suicides were taking place, the figure would go up to 20,000 in the five-year rule of the Congress.

White paper sought

In all, 2,002 farmers and weavers lost their lives despite the self-proclaimed "pro-farmer and pro-poor image" of the Government, they said, and demanded a white paper on the causes, the relief extended by the Government and the recurrence of suicides.

"It only proves that all their efforts to prevent suicides have not worked. The help lines have become helpless and hopeless lines.

There is no confidence that even the Chief Minister could solve their problems, as those meeting him at the Lake View Guest House here have been carrying pesticides bottles with them."

The list ran into 55 pages and had district-wise break-up starting with Srikakulam and details likes name, age, address, mode of suicide and date. It also included cases where the Government did not announced relief, which they said did not exceed 10 per cent. The compilation of the list started from May 14 (when the Congress Government took charge) and ended on November 19.

Medak toped the list with 151 suicides, followed by Mahabubnagar 149, Warangal 140, Nalgonda 125, Kurnool 116, Anantapur 110, Guntur 109. In other districts, the number was less than 100.

The statistics was gathered by party workers. Some of them were based on newspaper reports. They wondered how the Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, who as Opposition leader kept chanting about 3,000 suicides during the nine-year rule of the Telugu Desam, would react now.

Would he get his party leader, Sonia Gandhi, to visit the State as he did before, they asked.

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