The Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh landed into a controversy soon after his statement in the Rajya Sabha. He was answering at the question of C. P. Narayanan on the subject of “suicide by farmers”.
Dowry, love affairs and impotency were among the reasons for the deaths of over 1,400 farmers in India this year, Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said leading to uproar by opssorition.
Later Arun Jaitley came in his defense and a PIB release said that the department considers the issue of suicide by farmers with great sensitivity and deals it with all the seriousness it deserves.
While answering on such an important issue particularly on the floor of the House, the department considers that it is necessary to provide truthful information collated from different sources so as to enable an informed discussion on the subject. It quotes the annual reports of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) and the data reported by the State Governments as bases for this information, it adds.
Apart from reporting the factual data based on these two reports, the department in its reply has also said that ‘causes of suicides by farmers due to agrarian reasons, inter-alia, include indebtedness, crop failure, drought, etc’, says the release.
It was not the intention of the Minister to attribute the causes of farmers’ suicide to issues like love affair etc. It has been taken out of context and is being highlighted in an unwarranted manner, PIB release contends.