Crushing operations resumed in most sugarmills of Haryana on Friday, a day after leaders of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) Charuni decided to call off their stir for state advised prices (SAP) hike. BKU Charuni had been agitating for the last one week to press for their demand.
The decision to lift the protest was taken in view of the thousands of labourers who were left jobless in the crushing season.
BKU Charuni president Gurnam Singh Charuni, while addressing farmers in Kurukshetra, said, “The ₹10 hike announced by the government is not satisfactory but given the situation (of jobless labourers), we have decided to end the protest.”
Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar had announced ₹10 per quintal hike in sugarcane SAP on Wednesday thus fixing the SAP to ₹372 per quintal.
Demanding that the sugarcane SAP be increased to ₹450 a quintal, the farmers held repeated protests and road shows in the past month.
Cruel joke on cane growers, says Hooda on ₹10 per quintal hike in SAP
Interacting with the media in Rohtak, Hooda said the state government had played a cruel joke on cane growers by increasing the state advised price on sugarcane by just ₹10.
“The government keeps making excuses that the sugar mills are running in losses, but farmers bear the brunt of it for no fault of theirs. Farmers must get remunerative prices on their input costs,” he said.
Hooda said there was a 165% increase in the rate of sugarcane during the Congress regime. “During our government, Haryana gave the highest rates to farmers in the whole country. Today, farmers in Haryana are not even getting the price equal to Punjab,” he added.