Notices, marches and a late visit
Published 7 October 2026
For about two months, according to The Hindu, nobody with power looked closely at Yavatmal's wards. A report published on Wednesday, October 11, 2017 said the deaths began towards the end of July, that hundreds of farmers were admitted to hospitals from then on, and that it took almost two months for the government, the media and the political parties to notice. The administration, it said, acted only once the death toll reached double digits in September and the media began reporting the story, after the Vasantrao Naik Shetkari Swavalamban Mission, the state's farm distress task force, started circulating press notes to journalists in Nagpur.
The same report lists who came and in what order. The first politician to visit the district was the BJP member of Parliament from Bhandara-Gondia, Nana Patole, who spoke to the ailing farmers at the government medical college. As English-language papers began to give the story prominence, the state sent its minister of state for agriculture, Sadabhau Khot. The Shiv Sena leader and state transport minister Diwakar Raote followed, then the Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil. The paper wrote that the main opposition parties, the Congress and the NCP, had not yet organised any visible protest.
That is the account of one newspaper, and it is critical of several parties at once. It describes the Shiv Sena, which was then in the state coalition with the BJP, as "more of an opposition" than a partner and as having remained "a mute spectator". It quotes the Congress leader Vasant Purke saying the party had no district chief and would launch a protest once one was appointed. And it describes the one political figure raising the issue with fervour as Devanand Pawar, a former Congress member from the Banjara community who had formed his own Shetkari Nyaya Hakka Andolan Samiti after being sidelined in the party. Pawar told the paper that local party workers had only accompanied leaders to the hospitals and were not going there to visit the ailing farmers.
The Hindu also reported a view of Kishor Tiwari, the head of the task force, that cuts the other way. It wrote that the only organisation that had been vocal about farm distress in Yavatmal had been the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, and that many said that after Tiwari's appointment as head of the mission, the ground-level protests of his groups had become negligible. This is a claim reported by the paper and it is not tested in the report. It is included here because the same man's press notes were, by the paper's own account, how the story reached the press.
The first formal national response came on Monday, October 9, 2017, when the National Human Rights Commission took notice. The Times of India reported that the commission had issued notices to the Centre and the Maharashtra government over the deaths of several farmers in Yavatmal after spraying pesticide on cotton, and had asked the chief secretary of Maharashtra and the secretary of the union agriculture ministry for a detailed report within four weeks. It also asked Maharashtra to ensure that the best treatment was provided free of cost to farmers admitted to hospital or treated as outpatients.
The commission's wording was strong. Down To Earth quoted its release as saying it had taken suo motu cognisance of media reports. It asked the chief secretary to report on the steps taken to stop a recurrence and the action taken against guilty officers. The Business Standard's PTI report adds that the commission also expected details of the ex-gratia paid to victims, the rehabilitation of the aggrieved families and the policy perspective on the issue.
What the commission said about the cause is the sentence quoted most often. According to the PTI report in the Business Standard, the NHRC observed that most farmers in the country are not adequately literate and rely on government agencies for the safe use of agricultural products, and it said: "It appears that due to the lack of proper awareness about such a complicated technology for spraying pesticides on cotton crops, the farmers' right to life and livelihood has been grossly violated." The Nagpur Today copy of the release carries the further line that "the victim farmers have fallen prey to the callous and negligent attitude of the government departments." Scroll's short report quoted the same phrase in its headline framing.
The notice is a statement by the commission about the state's duty, made on the basis of media reports, and it does not find any company or individual at fault. It also does not mention a product by name in the portions the papers reproduce, except that Down To Earth says the media reports concerned Profex Super. Down To Earth adds a detail about that product: it says Profex Super insecticide by Nagarjuna Agrichem contains profenofos and cypermethrin, with a toxicity profile between moderate and severe.
The press reports of the notice carry different counts. Down To Earth wrote that the total number of deaths varied between nine and 18 over the last month according to different sources, with 800 instances of poisoning, 25 of them with loss of vision. The Business Standard said that, according to farm activists, the exposure had so far claimed at least 19 lives, although the government's figure differed. Daijiworld's IANS report said the NHRC acted on reports of at least 19 farmers dying and more than 600 affected, and attributed the first highlighting of the matter to Kishor Tiwari. Scroll said the poisoning was believed to have killed at least 32 farmers in the state. Where sources differ, these are different scopes again: nine to 18 is a range in the district, 19 and 600 are the activists' district figures, and 32 is a statewide estimate.
Compensation is another place the copies disagree, and probably through error. The Asian Age carried a headline standfirst saying the government had announced compensation of Rs 12 lakh, and the Nagpur Today copy of the release has the same figure, while Down To Earth, the Business Standard and The Hindu all say Rs 2 lakh. The Times of India and the PTI text say Rs 2 lakh as well. The record uses Rs 2 lakh. The Asian Age's version is at its report and the Nagpur Today copy of the release carries the same Rs 12 lakh figure.
The central government's own response appeared in the PTI report too. The Business Standard reports that Union Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir, speaking to reporters in Nagpur, said the Centre would add to the state's compensation of Rs 2 lakh. The rest of his statement is cut off in the available text, and so the record does not state the amount.
At the state level, the opposition made its case through allegation. Firstpost reported that the NCP's Dhananjay Munde, then Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Council, alleged on a Tuesday a "nexus" between Bt cotton seed companies and political parties, and demanded a probe into what he called a "massive Bt cotton seed scam". He said he had written to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Agriculture Minister Pandurang Fundkar. These are Munde's allegations, as reported, and the report does not present evidence for them.
On Monday, October 16, 2017, the Congress marched. The Hindu reported on Tuesday, October 17, 2017 that the party took out a Virat Janakrosh Morcha to the Yavatmal Collector's office on Monday, and quoted the state unit president Ashok Chavan saying 22 farmers had died in Yavatmal and over 750 had been affected. He said the chief minister had yet to visit the district and called the government a fraud. Chavan's figures are the Congress's and sit beside the district figures from other owners rather than inside them.
Chavan's speech, as The Hindu reported it, mixed the poisonings with other charges: higher fuel prices, GST, reservation and a loan waiver he called an eyewash. Those are the speaker's political claims, and the report reports them as such. The point for this chronology is narrower. By October 17, 2017, a month after the death of Bandu Sonule and ten days after The Hindu's report on political silence, the opposition had moved from silence to a march, and the question of a visit from the chief minister had become a political question.
The state's responses ran the other way. Down To Earth reports the state agriculture minister saying farmers had not followed the directions for safe use, and The Hindu's feature quotes a district official on the pink bollworm panic. The Wire's report quotes Subhash Nagare, the joint director of agriculture, on the spraying position. These reflect a state that was treating the deaths as a handling and awareness problem and acting on it with masks, pamphlets, closures of 47 service centres and bookings against five retailers.
The commission's four weeks ended in the second week of November. The record available to the record does not include a public copy of the state's reply to the commission, and the question of what the chief secretary reported remains open here. What the record does show is that the notice set the frame for the next phase: it asked for the policy perspective, for action against guilty officers, and for compensation and rehabilitation. Each of those three became a separate story, the first in the SIT's report, the second in the bans on certain pesticides and the cases against retailers, and the third in the long argument over how much was paid and to whom.
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