Report on farmer suicides in Punjab soon, Pawar

New Delhi, Apr 27 (UNI) The Government today said the Punjab government will submit a final report to the Centre by this month end on suicides by farmers in the state, which an NGO has estimated at 1276 in 19 years.

Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar replying to questions in this regard told the Rajya Sabha that several distinguishing features have been found in the suicide trend.

He said 86 per cent of the farmers were under heavy debt, majority were small farmers and young. Most of the suicide victims had borrowed money from informal money lenders.

He said the Punjab government will give its recommendations and measures would be taken to avoid such incidents like waiver of loans.

Congress member M S Gill said Non Performing Assets (NPAs) will have to be written off to avoid such incidents.

S Chaturvedi (Cong) said the MSP mechanism has not helped the farmers.

Mr Pawar said prices of agricultural goods have gone up more than the MSP and this has put the farmers in a dilemma.

When former Finance Minister and BJP member Yashwant Sinha asked how many farmers in Punjab have been given rolling credit cards, Mr Pawar said more than 65 per cent have the credit facilities.

Mr Pawar said the amount of outstanding loan per farmer household for all classes for Punjab was Rs 41,576 against the all India average of Rs 12,585.

Similarly, the number of farmer households having outstanding loan were 12.07 lakhs against the national figure of 434.24 lakh.

In terms of percentage 65.4 per cent farmer households were indebted in Punjab against the all India average of 48.6 per cent, he added.

UNI