Bijnor : Farmers affiliated to Bharatiya Kisan Union (Arajnaitik) have threatened to stop supplying sugarcane to Bilai Sugar Mill when the new crushing season begins on Thursday unless the mill clears Rs 26 crore in dues from the previous season. The farmers have also threatened to dump their produce at the district collectorate if the payments remain pending.
Around 31,000 farmers are associated with the mill, he said. Singh claimed that around 20,000 farmers had earlier submitted affidavits and held a protest, but no effective action had been taken. Bijnor has 10 sugar mills, of which nine mills have cleared their dues from the previous season.
Addressing a press conference, BKU (Arajnaitik) state youth president Digambar Singh said farmers had submitted affidavits to district magistrate Umesh Pratap Singh, stating that they would not supply sugarcane to the mill until their dues were paid. Singh said farmers had been waiting for their payments for nearly a year and were facing difficulties meeting household expenses, including their children’s school fees, while several farmers had been forced to borrow money despite having supplied their produce to the mill. He said only three of the mill’s sugarcane purchase centres had been cut during the sugarcane reservation order, while the dues remained unpaid. The farmers said they plan to submit fresh affidavits to the DM and to also lodge thousands of complaints on the govt’s Integrated Grievance Redressal System (IGRS) portal to highlight the pending payments. Bilai Sugar Mill is the only one with outstanding payments, farmers said.
Singh added that they would take their sugarcane to the collectorate if the mill began crushing without clearing the previous season’s dues. In that event, the district administration would be responsible for handling the produce, he added.