CURATED BY – GAURAV SINGHAL | CITYCHIEFNEWS

Deoband (Saharanpur), while addressing the meeting of the general body of the Cooperative Sugarcane Committee Limited Deoband, National President of Bharatiya Kisan Union Verma and West Pradesh Mukti Morcha, Bhagat Singh Verma said that the Yogi government of BJP has not increased the price of sugarcane by even ₹ 1 per quintal. Whereas the cost of sugarcane is continuously increasing. The government is not able to get the cost price of sugarcane from the sugar mills, let alone the profitable price of sugarcane. Due to which the sugarcane farmers are facing a huge financial crisis. Sugarcane farmers do not have money to pay the fees of their children, medicines of the elderly and to invest in farming. Due to which the sugarcane farmers are getting disillusioned with sugarcane. Bhagat Singh Verma said that in view of the increasing cost of sugarcane, the profitable price of sugarcane should be made ₹ 700 per quintal. Underweighing in sugar mills should be stopped. Sugarcane farmers should be given interest at the rate of 15% per annum on the delayed sugarcane payments made in the past years by the sugar mills. According to the Sugar Control Order 1966, the sugar mills which do not make sugarcane payments to the sugarcane farmers within 14 days should pay interest to the sugarcane farmers at the rate of 15% per annum. Sugar mills of the state have no right to deduct transportation charges if sugarcane payments and interest are due. This should be stopped. Bhagat Singh Verma said that to provide labourers to sugarcane farmers, MNREGA scheme should be directly linked to farming and labourers should be made available to farmers. GST and all taxes should be abolished on agricultural equipment, fertilizers, seeds, tractors, diesel etc. and they should be made available to farmers. Bhagat Singh Verma said that if the members of Parliament have increased their salary by 24%, then the prices of sugarcane and all crops of farmers should also be increased by at least 24%. The Yogi government of BJP is getting 50 thousand crore rupees revenue every year from sugarcane in the form of excise duty and the government is collecting more than one lakh crore GST every year on more than 1000 products made from sugarcane. Despite this, the central and state governments of BJP are neglecting the farmers. Which is a huge injustice to the farmers who provide food. Samarpal Singh, Satish Gupta, Monu Kumar, Amarnath, Ranveer Singh Advocate Yashpal Singh, Mohammad Zahid Hasan, Mohammad Mehboob, Chandrashekhar Sharma, Bhagat Singh, Devendra Chaudhary etc. participated in the meeting.