Even as Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy expressed his concern over the growing rate of suicides among farmers, one more sugarcane farmer in Bidar district ended his life by consuming poison. He had failed to sell his sugarcane to any of the factories.

With this, Bidar district has recorded suicides by 43 farmers, all of them sugarcane growers, during the current year. Kashinath Basalingappa (30), a resident of Mangalagi village in Humanabad taluk, committed suicide on Saturday night after his effort to sell sugarcane to a nearby factory failed, official sources said.

Basalingappa, who was a shareholder in the Sahakara Sakkare Karakhane (SSK), cultivated sugarcane in his three-acre land but the SSK did not lift the produce.

Kumaraswamy, who toured the district last week and stayed in the house of a sugarcane farmer who had committed suicide as part of his village stay programme, had announced a host of promises to farmers to prevent suicides.

“What is the use of me continuing in the CM’s post if farmers are committing suicide?” he asked.

He even tried to convince the farmers not to worry about their debts. He said he saw no logic in the industrialists and businessmen who had borrowed crores living happily, while farmers with a loan of few thousand rupees commited suicide.

The district has witnessed a record production of sugarcane this year. But lack of sufficient number of factories to purchase sugarcane has become a major problem.