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Hike in sugarcane SAP: Farmers to intensify stir with protest at Amit Shah’s rally in Gohana
Bharatiya Kisan Union (Charuni) leader Gurnam Singh Charuni urged the farmers to be prepared for a long agitation.
A day after the farmers’ outfits claimed that their meeting with Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar for a hike in sugarcane prices has failed to yield any result, and now they will intensify their agitation starting January 25.
Sugarcane growers have been demanding a hike in State Advised Price (SAP). The decision to intensify the stir was taken in a state-level meeting of the representatives of farmers of all 14 sugar mills of the state. It was unanimously decided to continue with the agitation. The farmers’ bodies said they will not allow the crushing operations at sugar mills until the government increases the SAP to ₹450 per quintal from the existing ₹362.
Bharatiya Kisan Union (Charuni) leader Gurnam Singh Charuni urged the farmers to be prepared for a long agitation.
Starting from January 25, the farmers plan to take out protest marches at all the sugar mills in the state, followed by protesting without shirts at Union home minister Amit Shah’s Gohana rally on January 29, if the government fails to accept their demand.
“You should reach the rally in BJP’s vehicles and remove your shirts when Amit Shah starts his speech,” Charuni instructed farmers.
Charuni said after the January 25 protest marches, on January 26, the farmers will also burn Holi of sugarcane outside all the sugar mills and observe the birth anniversary of farmer leader late Chhotu Ram. On January 27, the farmers will block roads in front of all the sugar mills of the state.
“Thereafter we will decide on the next step at panchayat on January 30 in Kurukshetra,” he said, adding, “We have tried our best to make the government understand, but it is not ready to hear farmers. We are being forced to hold protests,” Charuni said.
BKU (Tikait) state president Rattan Mann, who led a delegation of farmers in a meeting with the chief minister and agriculture minister in Chandigarh on Sunday, said that they will send 101 farmers wearing black clothes to Amit Shah’s rally to make him aware him about the injustice being done with the farmers in Haryana. “This government has no concerns for the farmers”, he said.
Supporting the demands of the sugarcane farmers, former chief minister and Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda said, “The farmers are demanding a rate of ₹450 per quintal, and the Haryana government should at least give them the same rate as that of Punjab ( ₹380).” Hooda claimed that during the previous Congress government, there was a record increase of 165% in the rate of sugarcane, while during the BJP regime, it increased by only 17%.
