27 December 2022, New Delhi: Unaffected by the protests by growers demanding increase in the state advised price for sugarcane, the Haryana government has decided to retain the last year’s SAP for the current crushing season.
he governor of Haryana hereby regulates the price of sugarcane supplied to the sugarmills in Haryana during the crushing season 2022-23 to be paid by the sugar mills to cane suppliers in their assigned areas at the rate of ₹ 362 and ₹ 355 per quintal for the early and lateral varieties of sugarcane respectively,” says a copy of the notification issued by the office of the additional chief secretary to agriculture and farmers welfare department Sumita Misra.
However, the decision has agitated the sugarcane growers in the state, who have been demanding that the sugarcane SAP be fixed at ₹ 450 per quintal following a surge in the input cost due to severe pest attack, resulting in a decline of up to 50 percent in the sugarcane yield.
The farmers unions have already held repeated protests and demanded the government to increase the SAP above ₹ 380 per quintal fixed by the neighbouring Punjab as they claimed that Haryana is known for providing the highest sugarcane SAP in the country for the past several years.
The farmer leaders are alleging that the sugar mills are earning a huge profit as the government allowed the export of sugar and trimmed the GST rate from 18% to 5% on the ethanol supplied to refineries.
“Even private and government operated sugarmills in the state are also producing ethanol which has emerged as another source of income with low input cost for the sugar mills, but the mills are not ready to share the profit with the farmers,” alleged farmer leader Ratan Mann.iya Kisan Union (Charuni) has also given a call to hold protests outside the residences of all ministers and MLAs over the issue on December 29.
Charuni said Karnal farmers associated with three sugar mills in the district will hold a protest outside the chief minister’s residence.
All sugar mills in the state will be locked for three hours on January 5 and from January 12 crushing operations at all sugar mills of the state will be stopped indefinitely as farmers will lock gates of all cooperative and private sugar mills of the state.
BKU (Tikait) has also called a state level meeting at Panipat on December 28 to take the next decision following government’s decision to keep the rates unchanged.
