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Vehicle carrying sugarcane to Maharashtra mill set afire
The development comes after the Maharashtra sugarcane growers decided not to supply cane to sugar crushing mills in south Maharashtra for not paying the sum demanded by them.
The agitating farmers’ organisations set ablaze a tractor transporting cane to a sugar crushing mill in Maharashtra, in Belagavi taluk in the early hours of Friday, people familiar with the matter said.
The development comes after the Maharashtra sugarcane growers decided not to supply cane to sugar crushing mills in south Maharashtra for not paying the sum demanded by them.
According to Belagavi police, a few people, suspected to be from Maharashtra, set on fire a tractor transporting sugarcane to a sugar mill in Maharashtra, near Bodakyanatti village in Belagavi taluk at around 1am on Friday. “A group of about 12 believed to the farmers from Maharashtra set ablaze a tractor in the border village of our state in our station limits and fled away from the scene,” Kakati sub inspector of police Manjunath Hulakunt told HT.
He said, a sugarcane grower from Tavarewad village of Chandgad taluk in Maharashtra was transporting sugarcane in the double-trolley tractor to a sugar mill in Chandgad taluk via Karnataka. The vehicle was stopped by a group of about 12 farmers from Chandgad area near Bodakyanatti village in Belagavi taluk, unloaded the laden cane from the trolleys and set ablaze to the engine after pouring petrol to the engine.
Tractor driver said that a gang of people stopped his vehicle, alighted the canes laden on the trolleys and set on fire the vehicle, after pouring the petrol they had brought in plastic bottles. “I was transporting the sugarcane to the sugar factory via Karnataka as the route is small and also to avoid the ‘Farmers Vigilance Squad’ keeping a watch on all the border areas of Maharashtra,” he said.
Two separate complaints have been registered into the matter by the sugar factory and the tracker owner with the Kakati police. “We have registered the complaints, the FIR will be framed after investigation,” Kakati sub inspector Hulakunt said.
The sugarcane growers’ of south Maharashtra under the banner of “Swabhimani Shethkari Sanghatana, Kolhapur,” (Self Resected Farmers’ Organisation, Kolhapur) have decided to ban the supply of sugarcane to sugar mills in southern region of the state for not paying the demanded sum to the cane growers. The sugarcane growers have decided to continue with the ban until their demand is not met. “We want the mills in our region to pay minimum sum of ₹3,800 to ₹4,000 for per tonne of cane supplied. Since our demand has not been considered, the we have decided not to supply cane to any factory, this season,” farmer leader and former Shivasena MP Raju Shetti told media persons at Kolhapur on Friday.
Since more than 50% of the farmers grow sugarcane in southern Maharashtra, the sugar mills in the region are paying upto ₹ 3,000 per tonne. - rate and demand of a product came down when supply to the market is high - the farmers despite appeals have grown sugarcane for which the mills here not responding to the demand of Shethkari Sanghatana, said the organisations’ Kolhapur unit office bearer Sambhaji Kore.
