A day after Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday rejected outright a demand by the milk producers for Rs 5 per litre of milk as subsidy, his Government obtained from the Western Railway to bring through containers 5.28 lakh litres of milk everyday to Mumbai from Ahmedabad to tide over the milk shortage crisis.
Through a tweet, the Western Railway confirmed that in view of milk shortage in Maharashtra, it had given special permission to the State Government to bring in 12 milk containers of 44000 liters of capacity each to Mumbai in the next few days by 59440 Ahmedabad-Mumbai Central passenger train.
On a day when the milk producing farmers’ agitation called by Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) entered the second day, Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Haribhahu Bagde convened a meeting of all parties to hammer out a solution to the agitation. However, the meeting did not produce any results.
At the meeting attended among others by the Chief Minister, Dairy Development Minister Mahadev Jankar, Revenue Minister Chandrakant Patil, leader of the Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil and senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar, Fadnavis reiterated that the State Government could not provide a subsidy of Rs 5 per litre all milk producers as demanded by the SSS.
Meanwhile, the Maharashtra Government has called the representatives all those co-operative and private bodies that collect more than one lakh litres of milk every day, for talks on Thursday.
While disapproving the milk producers’ agitation, the chief minister had on Monday expressed the State Government’s inability to give a subsidy of Rs 5 per litre to all the milk producers. “Only 40 per cent of the total milk producers are registered with milk co-operatives. The remaining 60 per cent of the milk is collected private organisations. The private organisations do not have statistics of the quantum of milk collected by them. Hence giving subsidy as direct transfer to producers will result in a scam. That’s why it is not prudent to give subsidy to all milk producers,” Fadnavis had said.
However, he had offered to hold talks with the representatives of the milk producers. “Our doors are always open for discussion. The Government has not adopted an egoistic approach on any issue. But, I do not approve of the manner in which the current agitation (by milk producers) is going on,” the Chief Minister had said.
In related development, reports began to pour in different from cities and towns in the state about the milk shortage arising out of the agitation called by the SSS, which is being supported by the ruling Shiv Sena and Opposition NCP.
For the second consecutive day, there were reports from different parts of the state about tankers carrying milk to cities and towns in the state being stopped en route.
In one of the agitation-related incidents, the protesters waylaid two tempos carrying milk on the Kurdwadi-Barshi road and emptied 5,000 litres of milk pockets from the two vehicles.
The Maharashtra Government has fixed the procurement price of Rs 27 per litre but the farmers get barely Rs 17 per litre. They are demanding a direct subsidy of Rs 5 per litre to the farmers on the lines they are getting in Goa, Karnataka and Kerala.
Maharashtra has 15,000 milk cooperative dairy societies and 85 cooperative dairy unions, 98 milk processing plans.There are 156 chilling centres and 192 cold storages including 167 in the private sector. The State receives 18 lakh litres of milk from Gujarat and five lakh litres from Karnataka every day. The daily consumption of milk is pegged at 65 to 70 lakh litres.