Congress state president Nirmal Khatri termed both State as well as Central governments as `anti-famers’. He alleged that even when the crushing season already started for sugarcane crops, the growers yet to get their pending dues. Besides, the state government also not announced fresh support price of the cane as promised by them during the campaign in last Assembly elections.
leading a dharna of the Congressmen here at GPO Park on Wednesday morning, to register their protest against the state government’s apathy towards the problems being faced by sugarcane growers, State president, Nirmal Khatri asserted that the two governments, the one in Uttar Pradesh and the other one sitting in New Delhi, both are “anti-farmer” and had so far failed to address a single problem faced by `Annadata’.
``Samajwadi Party had made tall promises to the farmers during last election campaign but once they are in power, they forget that the farmers are the back-bone of the economy and every citizen had to pay hard if the Annadata would not get their dues in time”, asserted Khatri while accusing the state government for neither providing dues to the cane growers despite of High Court’s order in this regard along with that the government also failed to hike the cane procurement price which they announced to fix at Rs 350 per quintal during election campaign but so far just raised the amount to Rs 280.
``On one hand Government failed to give RS 350 per quintal price to cane growers and on the other, they even not cleared the dues of the farmers as per the price of Rs 280 already announced in this regard”, alleged Khatri while targeting Samajwadi Party government. Khatri warned that if the state government failed to solve the problems of sugarcane growers soon, Congress would be forced to take up their cause in a “forceful” manner.
It may be mentioned that on the call given by state president, Nirmal Khatri, all Party units held dharnas at all district headquarters in protest against the failure of the state government to clear cane dues, delay in announcing support
price and starting crushing by the sugar mills, a party release said.
According to spokesman of the UPCC, Virendra Madan, similar dharnas were also staged in Faizabad, Barabanki, Basti, Ambedkarnagar, Bareilly, Siddhartnagar, Sant Kabirnagar, Varanasi, Muzaffarnagar, Allahabad, Azamgarh and other places.