Sugarcane dues: Action against 12 PVT mills in UP

The Uttar Pradesh government has issued recovery certificates (RCs) against 12 private sugar mills for failure to pay farmers’ dues on time.

These units belong to the Mawana, Modi and Birla groups, besides standalone units of Venus Sugar Mill and Anand Agro. These are located in Ghaziabad, Baghpat, Meerut, Bareilly and Gorakhpur.

Interestingly, this is the first instance of the state government issuing RCs in the crushing season 2010-11.

State sugarcane development and sugar industry minister Naseemuddin Siddiqui said the government would not tolerate any laxity in the payment of farmers’ dues and commission of cane societies. He said these units had failed to act despite multiple missives from the department.

So far, Rs 12,436 crore had been paid to the state cane farmers by mills against total dues of Rs 12,929 crore.

A total of 102 private sugar mills had participated in crushing this season, of which 62 units had paid their full dues. Remaining mills have been warned to pay their dues within the stipulated time. Mills get 14 days’ time from the delivery of cane at factory gate to pay the farmers without attracting penalty.

Last week, Business Standard had reported that a meeting had been convened this week over the vital issue of pending cane dues amounting to over Rs 950 crore.

This year sugar production has been pegged at under 5.9 million tonnes in Uttar Pradesh. Last year, although cane acreage and production figures were much lower, the farmers were paid much higher. The total payout to farmers was around Rs 13,200 crore due to higher cane prices hovering around Rs 250-300 per quintal due to spurt in sugar retail prices.

This year, the consolidated payment levels are low, since farmers have been paid Rs 205-210 per quintal in line with the State Advised Price (SAP) of cane.