By NewsGram Staff Writer

The one-year office tenure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi witnessed a record 1306 farmers suicide in Maharashtra as claimed by a farmers' watchdog on Monday.

Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti chief Kishore Tiwari said that the statistics is around 40 per cent higher than the same in between May 2013 and May 2014.

"The optimistic view about the Prime Minister Narendra Modi might not be true for the Vidarbha farmers which are the focal point of Indian farmland suicides in the past 10 years," said Tiwari.

As the NDA II marked its first year in the power, 1306 farmers committed suicide as reported by official statistics. The five million agrarian communities of the state witnessed 448 suicides in the first 140 days of 2015 and the trend has been on the rise, Tiwari told IANS.

"Various factors like the previous year's crises, including irreparable damage to Kharif and Rabi crops, drastic climatic changes resulting in heavy droughts and floods coupled with hailstorms, and market recessions acted as catalyst in the steady increase of suicide rates," said Tiwari.

"Farmers don't find any interest in the grand celebration of PM Modi's first anniversary where over three million cotton farmers and two million tribal families continue to battle starvation in the fields of Vidarbha," he said.