For the past 20 days, farmer Ram Babu Singh, 57, had been trying to buy fertilisers for the wheat crop he has cultivated. He would rise early, and braving the cold wave, travel to markets around Adharbari village in Bihar’s Saran district, only to return empty-handed. This Saturday, he had set out at seven in the morning, but never came back.

Singh had heard from fellow villagers that fertiliser stocks had arrived at nearby Taraiya Bazar, and taken his place in the queue outside the shop. Around two in the afternoon, he slumped to the ground unconscious.

A few farmers present there took him to a government hospital in the area.

“The doctors asked us to take him to any private hospital with better facilities. We did so, but he breathed his last soon after we reached the private hospital. Though it seems he died of exposure to cold, which could have led to cardiac arrest, deep inside our heart we know that the ongoing fertiliser scarcity killed him,” Singh’s younger son Rakesh Kumar told The Telegraph.

“My father had been very worried about the wheat crop. Irrigation was over a couple of weeks ago and the plants were yellow for want of urea fertiliser,” Kumar said.

Bihar is going through an acute fertiliser scarcity for two months with no redress from chief minister Nitish Kumar’s NDA government so far despite several senior leaders from the JDU and the BJP repeatedly promising adequate supply. Nitish had in December assured that the crisis would be over in a week.

There have been reports of fertilisers being sold in the black market and also being smuggled to neighbouring Nepal. There have been protests, including a few that turned violent, by farmers in different parts of the state over the last couple of months.

Bihar had received just 65 per cent of its share of fertilisers from the Centre during October to December. Diversion of fertilisers to the black market to be sold at exorbitant rates added to the scarcity.

Asked about the fertiliser shortage in Bihar, Giriraj Singh, Union minister for rural development and panchayati raj who was in Patna, said: “There has been a shortage of fertilisers due to an international conspiracy. We don’t have DAP with us at present.”

The minister did not elaborate what he meant by “international conspiracy”. Sources in the agriculture department said raw materials used to be sourced from China, which had put a squeeze on exports.

A BJP leader claimed that instead of rationing the available fertilisers among the states, “the central government diverted more quantities to the poll-bound states, especially Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, to ensure that the scarcity did not spin out of control” and create political problems.