No plans for special probe into farmer suicides: Odisha Govt

The Odisha government today said it has no plans to conduct any special probe into the deaths of farmers even as it admitted of receiving reports of 122 farmer suicide cases from across the state.
"The state government has no plans to conduct investigations into farmers suicide cases by any specialised committee," State Agriculture Minister Pradeep Kumar Maharathy said in the Assembly while replying to a question.
Rejecting the opposition's allegation that farmers in large numbers committed suicide due to crop loss and debt burden, Maharathy said the farmers' suicide incidents have no link to agricultural crisis due to drought.

Stating that the collectors and SPs of different districts have already investigated the causes, the minister said, "The probe revealed that the suicides were mostly due to personal, domestic, health-related and other reasons, but not due to crop loss or debt burden."
The minister said the state government has already announced a package for the drought-hit farmers.
"Waiver of water cess, stop of loan amount collection, paddy procurement from sharecroppers are some of the provisions of the state government's drought package," the minister said.

Maharathy, however, said at least 33 per cent of the crop in 215 blocks of 26 districts was damaged due to scanty and erratic rainfall during this monsoon.

"The state government has made elaborate plans for the Rabi crop to overcome the drought crisis," he said.
Earlier, both the opposition Congress and BJP had demanded a judicial probe into the reasons behind large-scale farmers' suicide cases in the state.