LUCKNOW: Two days ahead of farmers calling a mahapanchayat in Muzaffarnagar on Sunday, UP government attacked the UPA government for being responsible for large-scale suicides committed by farmers.
UP cane minister Suresh Rana on Friday demanded that Congress-ruled Punjab should declare how much is due on cane farmers in the state.
“The UP government has paid 84% of the dues for 2020-21 season,” Rana told reporters.
Reiterating the UP government’s stand of increasing cane prices for the upcoming crushing season from October, Rana said farmers welfare is top priority for the BJP government and it which would continue to work for them.
“The government has always stood with the farmers,” he said.
The minister said that sugarcane production has been increasing in UP, prompting the state government to bring farmers closer to technology.
“Even the slip is reaching farmers directly on their mobile phone through SMS,” he said.
He said that the state government had paid the outstanding sugarcane dues of Rs 10,661 crore of the previous governments.
“In the past four years, the state government has paid Rs 1,42,311 crore to sugarcane farmers. There was no work done for farmers in the previous government. Earlier, either mills were closed or sold off at throwaway prices,” he said.
“It was after the BJP came to power that a roadmap for revival of mills was charted out,” he said, underscoring how mills in west UP as well as east UP were revived.
