RLD hits out at Yogi Adityanath government for not increasing sugarcane SAP

RLD leader Jayant Chaudhary alleged that the government wanted to decrease the SAP this year but could not dare do this because of ongoing farmers’ agitation.

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) national vice-president Jayant Chaudhary has criticised the Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to not increase the State-Advised Price (SAP) of sugarcane for the third consecutive year.

Jayant Chaudhary also accused the government of not paying sugarcane farmers' pending dues. (PTI Photo)

The state Cabinet on Sunday cleared the proposal to maintain the status quo on the SAP for 2020-21 crushing season. In a statement issued here on Monday, Jayant said the government chose to ignore farmers’ hard work and rising input cost by not increasing the SAP for the third year in a row.

“The prices of diesel, electricity, urea etc are rising constantly and farmers were looking forward to an increase in the SAP but the government has disappointed them yet again,” he said.

He alleged that the government wanted to decrease the SAP this year but could not dare do this because of ongoing farmers’ agitation. He also claimed that cane farmers’ ₹10,174 crore dues were still pending against the sugar mills.

Hindustan Times highlighted on Monday that high-frequency economic indicators suggest that the rural demand growth might be heading into rough weather once again. The biggest reason for this seems to be a worsening of the terms of trade against farmers. The farmers' terms of trade refers to a suite of indicators that measure average changes to prices and farm costs of the agricultural sector. Price indexes measure the average growth in prices that farmers receive at the farm gate for their product, and in the prices paid for inputs to production.