New Delhi: UP-based private sugar mills are not short of funds to clear arrears of Rs 3,055 crore to cane farmers, Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said on Thursday while asking companies not to make payment a "prestige issue".
"It is not that you have no money at all to pay sugarcane arrears to growers. Don't make this a prestige issue. Make cane arrear payment at the earliest and commence the operations for this year," he said.
He said that the Centre has no role to play in this issue. "The state government is equipped with all the powers and it should take action," he added.
Sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh, the country's second biggest producing state, have threatened to shut down their operations in the new season 2014-15 starting October if the state government continues to fix the cane price arbitrarily.
Stating that five mills owe majority of arrears in UP, Paswan said that out of total cane arrears of Rs 3,055 crore, Rs 2,025 crore belongs to five mills --Bajaj Hindusthan, Mawana, Modi, Simbhaoli and Shamli.
Bajaj Hindusthan has to pay the highest arrears of Rs 906 crore, followed by Mawana Sugars Ltd (Rs 470 crore), Modi Sugar Mills (Rs 367 crore), Simbhaoli Sugar Mills (Rs 225 crore) and Shamli Sugar Mills (Rs 57 crore), he added.
At all-India level, Paswan said, the total sugarcane arrears have come down to Rs 5,957 crore till September-end from Rs 15,000 crore when the new government came to power in May-end.
As of now, sugarcane arrears is maximum in Uttar Pradesh at Rs 3,055 crore, followed by Karnataka (Rs 1802 crore), Tamil Nadu (Rs 439 crore), Uttarakhand (Rs 215 crore), Bihar (167 crore), Gujarat (Rs 117 crore), Andhra Pradesh (Rs 48 crore), Puducherry (Rs 21.41 crore), Madhya Pradesh (Rs 6.37 crore), Telangana (Rs 7.19 crore) and West Bengal (Rs 4.92 crore), he added.
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