Thiruvananthapuram, April 25 (IANS) Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan Monday staged a seven-hour fast to demand a nation-wide ban on endosulphan, a highly toxic pesticide.

 
 He began his fast at 10 a.m. along with a few cabinet colleagues. People from all walks of life, including a bishop, joined him in the fast which was held at the Martyr's Column here.
 
 The fast was staged to coincide with the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants, which began in Geneva. During the April 25-29 convention, India has decided it would not support a call for a ban on the pesticide, a Left leader said.
 
 Besides the chief minister's fast, activists of the ruling Left Democratic Front held protests in 13 districts of the state.
 
 Achuthanandan said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's tackling of the issue was deplorable.
 
 “Kerala and Karnataka have banned this pesticide but the centre says that only if the whole country wants a ban, it is possible. Does it mean that only if the whole of the country suffers will the centre order the ban?” asked Achuthanandan.
 
 The highlight of Achuthanandan's fast was the presence of former central minister and veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader O. Rajagopal, who was seated next to him.
 
 Leader of Opposition Oommen Chandy of the Congress, who was away in Delhi to brief the prime minister on the immediate intervention to ban the pesticide, was critical of Achuthanandan.
 
 “He should have conducted this fast in West Bengal because the (ruling Left) government has not yet asked for a ban. It is only Kerala and Karnataka who have banned this," Chandy told IANS.
 
 Achuthanandan "is making political capital out of this because in the five years that he was in power he never took up a case against the use of endosulphan", Chandy said.
 
 The use of endosulfan in the estates of state-owned Plantation Corporation of Kerala (PCK) in Kasargode district began in the early 1970s and continued till 2001.
 
 About 500 deaths since 1995 have been officially acknowledged as  related to the spraying of endosulfan in about 11 villages. Unofficial estimates put the deaths since the late 1970s around 4,000.