Karnataka - Gulbarga   

Sugarcane growers demand relief of Rs. 15,000 an acre

GULBARGA: The Gulbarga District Sugarcane Growers’ Association and the District Raitha Horata Samiti have demanded that Governor Rameshwar Thakur announce Rs. 15,000 an acre as compensation to growers whose sugarcane has not been crushed.

President of the association Kedarlingaiah Hiremath, who also heads the samiti, told presspersons here on Friday that owing to the delay in announcing compensation last year, 45 sugarcane growers had committed suicide. “The Government made an announcement last year that a compensation of Rs. 25,000 per hectare would be given in May. But it did not implement its decision. The same mistake should not be committed this year,” he added.

Mr. Hiremath said that according to an estimate, of the 50,000 hectares of land under sugarcane cultivation this year, the crop in 12,000 hectares, accounting for 5 lakh tonnes, would remain uncrushed. Though the factories in Aland and Afzalpur were crushing sugarcane, they would not be in a position to utilise the crop fully owing to low crushing capacity.

The Governor should concede the demand of sugarcane growers and pay Rs. 200 as bonus per tonne of sugarcane crushed by factories.

Mr. Hiremath said the Government should come out with a scheme for payment of compensation to farmers who lost their crops in fire accidents. A sum of Rs. 1,000 ex-gratia paid to farmers who had lost their agriculture produce in fire accidents had been stopped. The samiti had decided to create a corpus of Rs. 1 crore to pay compensation to farmers in distress.

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