Coming down harshly on the Akhilesh Yadav government
in Uttar Pradesh for failing to ensure payment of cane dues to farmers, the Allahabad High Court on Friday directed the principal secretary of cane development, Rahul Bhatnagar, to file a personal affidavit in a week's time indicating the steps he has taken to ensure payment of dues and the measures he is likely to use to get the remaining money released to the farmers in future.
Stating that non-payment of dues has created social disturbance among farmers, the court said it cannot sit and watch while this is happening.
The bench of Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud and Justice Dilip Gupta asked Bhatnagar to file details of the remaining cane arrears. The court also asked him to give a mill-wise statement of the dues plus the interest payable by each of them.
The case came up for hearing on a writ filed by VM Singh of Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan, who claimed that the government and mills are hand in glove and that's why the mills are not making timely payments.
"The entire issue revolves around paying interest on delayed payment. The mills do not want to pay the interest due on them and the government too is going slow on them. There is no coercive action yet on any mill. It is a case of match-fixing," he said.
The sugar mills, on their part, harped on the condition of the industry and said that if forced to make the payments along with interest, most of the mills will not be able to make payments for the current season, which would mean that dues for this year will pile up.
"All that the mills can do is to stop making payments for the current season so as to clear last year's dues of nearly Rs 950 crore first. If we take into account the interest on it, the amount would swell to nearly Rs 1,500 crore. Since the banks have no confidence in the sugar industry, they are also not coming forward to help us. The mills have no money of their own to make these payments and hence the delay," said a miller on the condition of anonymity.
He added that coercive action will have a drastic impact on the industry's future. "This one act will kill the sugar industry in the state," he said.