Just as nearly 200 sugarcane farmers from UP were protesting at Vijay Chowk, near the Parliament, the Lok Sabha amended the Essential Commodities Act 1955 in a bid to mitigate their plight. Rajya Sabha had already cleared it in April. According to Food Minister Sharad Yadav, this will safeguard the interests of sugarcane growers by giving the Centre power to streamline the ‘‘regulated release mechanism’’ for supply of freesale sugar in the market.This will re-stabilise the market prices of sugar and overcome difficulties arising out of the policy being challenged in court. Once there is movement of sugar in the market, the mill owners will be in a position to pay farmers their dues instead requesting the Court’s permission to increase their quota for sale. Though, sugar sector was decontrolled, Centre has been regulating the supply of levy and free sugar under a regulated release mechanism to ensure availability of sugar round the year. But various court orders obtained by mill owners made this system infructuous.The sugar industry has been facing its worse-ever crisis with a carry-over stock of 102 lakh tonnes from 2001-02 sugar season and likely stock of 78 lakh tonnes of sugar during 2002-03.SP and RJD members, led by Akhilesh Singh and Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, protested against the Bill stating this had been brought under pressure from the sugar lobby and would jeopardise the interests of sugarcane growers who, they said, were forced to commit suicide due to unpaid dues running into crores and minimum statutory price for their produce not being given to them by sugarmill owners.Inspite of the government taking steps to mitigate the hardship of sugarcane growers including creating a buffer stock of Rs 20 lakh tonnes and giving them freight subsidies, it had little impact on the plight of the farmers.In Rajya Sabha, Yadav blamed private mill owners for the dues to sugarcane farmers. Answering a question in Rajya Sabha, he said: ‘‘talks were on for a speedy resolution of the crisis’’. Amidst concern expressed by both the ruling and Opposition benches on the arrears of sugarcane growers in UP, the Centre admitted in the House that the outstanding dues for 2002-03 was about Rs 1,140 crore. Almost Rs 25 crore pertaining to 2001-02 sugar season was outstanding to the cane growers in the state.Yadav said the discrepancy arose as the cooperative and public sector mills in the state have been asked to pay cane price in the range of Rs 95-100 per quintal while private sugar mills were by and large paying at the rate of Rs 70 to Rs 90 per quintal. The reason was that private mill owners had got stays from the Supreme Court.
