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An advertisement released by the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Karnataka in its campaign for the coming taluk and zilla elections has put it in a spot.

The advertisement, published in some Kannada newspapers on December 19, shows a ‘happy’ farmer harvesting sugarcane and another driving a tractor. It claims that the “doors of his fortune opened after the BJP came to power.” This has enraged the farmers of Baburayanakopplu village in Srirangapatna taluk, Mandya district. The reason — the ‘happy farmer’ committed suicide 18 months ago because of his inability to repay his debts.

The farmers staged a demonstration in Baburayanakopplu on the Mysore-Bangalore highway on Monday, protesting against the advertisement, and raised slogans denouncing the government.

According to Baburayanakopplu Taluk Panchayat member B.S. Sandesh, who led the protest, the person shown in the photograph was not even a farmer. He was Nagaraju (32), an agricultural labourer, from Baburayanakopplu.

Nagaraju committed suicide in May 2009 as he was unable to repay the money borrowed from a moneylender. An amateur photographer took his picture two years before he committed suicide, according to his father, Hanume Gowda.

Mr. Gowda said Nagaraju, who had studied up to the second standard, was survived by his wife, Lakshmamma, son Umesh and daughter Bhavya. No member of his family was affiliated to any political party and Nagaraju was the sole breadwinner of the family, he added.

The protesters demanded an apology from the BJP for misleading the people and urged Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa to tender an unconditional apology to Nagaraju’s family. They also demanded financial assistance for his daughter’s education and compensation to his family.

On realising the mistake, the BJP published an altered advertisement with another ‘happy farmer’ in some dailies on Monday.