MP farmer 'allegedly' kills self over fertilizer shortage; administration denies

A farmer in Ashoknagar district of Madhya Pradesh allegedly killed himself over a shortage of fertilizer, an issue that has caused a lot of furore in the state during the past two weeks.

The farmer, Dhanpal Singh, 40, reportedly consumed poisonous substances at his home in Piprol village in Naisarai tehsil of Ashoknagar, late Wednesday night and was declared dead at the district hospital in the wee hours of Thursday, sources said. His relatives claimed to a section of media that Dhanpal was troubled over the unavailability of fertilizer for the past 15 days and this led him to take the extreme step.

Congress has attacked the state government over the issue. Ex-chief minister Kamal Nath, who had earlier criticized the government for failing to manage the fertilizer availability, on Friday, tweeted, “Farmer suicides continue in Madhya Pradesh. Now farmer Dhanpal Yadav of Piprol in Ashoknagar has died by suicide as he could not get fertilizer. But the Shivraj government is busy with the elections and the chief minister is saying that there is no fertilizer crisis in the state.”

The Ashoknagar district administration has, however, denied that the death of Dhanpal Singh had anything to do with fertilizer shortage or even agriculture. District collector R. Umamaheshwari told THE WEEK that Dhanpal was a driver by profession and often remained out of the village on work. He also had alcohol-related problems. The agricultural land belongs to his father. “His (Dhanpal’s) wife has given a written statement that there was no issue of fertilizer shortage. Even the cause of death is not clear in the short postmortem as the symptoms did not match poisoning and there were traces of alcohol in the body. The cause of death will be clear after the visceral test reports and detailed postmortem report comes in,” the collector said.

She also said that currently there is no shortage of fertilizer in the district and even on Friday stock was received. “Earlier there were some issues, but, we resolved it by talking with private players and offering alternative fertilizers to the farmers (urea and NPK if DAP is not available). The private players provide fertilizer to farmers at the same rate as the government,” the collector said.

However, there have been several instances of protests by farmers over fertilizer shortage and even cases of loot of fertilizers during the past two weeks in different parts of the state. In Ashoknagar, farmers had manhandled a district administration official over the distribution of tokens for fertilizer procurement on October 25. Incidents were also reported from Morena, where police had to resort to lathi-charge. In Chhatarpur tokens for fertilizer were given out from the police station to avoid ruckus. There have been incidents in Guna and Tikamgarh districts too.

On Thursday, following a review meeting, the chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan assured an adequate supply of fertilizers like DAP, urea and NPK for the farmers of the state. In a veiled admission regarding shortage, he had said that 32 additional rakes of fertilizers will reach various places in Madhya Pradesh by October 30 and even in November, adequate supply will be ensured.