At a time when drought has been declared in about half of Maharashtra - about 150 tehsils out of 360 - a Right to Information query has revealed that the number of farmer suicides in the state has doubled in the last four years. In a letter to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the Maharashtra government says between 2011 and 2014, which is when the Congress-NCP was in power, 6,268 famers committed suicide. The number rose sharply by 91 per cent to 11,995 from January 2015 till the end of 2018.
