Sugarcane farmers on the warpath, try to gherao CM's home

Bengaluru: Sugarcane growers in their hundreds on Monday tried to blockade the Chief Minister's home in the city. They were demanding a higher Minimum Selling Price (MSP) of Rs 4,500 per tonne and also a waiver of all pending electricity bills before 2017.

The police stopped the marchers and took some of them into custody and later released them. The farmers had come from all parts of the sugarcane growing areas, like northern, central and south Karnataka districts mainly from Mandya where over 11 lakh acres of land comes under sugarcane cultivation.

Badagalapura Nagendra, leader of the sugarcane growers in the state stated that "the government had promised that the government itself will pay off the power bills of all sugarcane growers before 2017 which the government has not done so far. The MSP of sugarcane has also not been revised since 2017, which means that the government had forgotten about the hardships of the farmers totally".

He said many of the legislators and cabinet ministers in the government at present and in the past are owners of sugar-producing companies, it appears to us that the government was tacitly supporting them by keeping itself away from making pro-farmer policies. "If those ministers and legislators who own sugar factories want to give justice to the growers they must join forces with the farmers" Nagendra added.

The growers also wanted the government to immediately announce State Advisory Price (SAP) for sugarcane in the state. The farmers said 'if not today, we will block the Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai when he comes to Krishnaraja Sagar Dam to pay tributes to the Cauvery river when the dam fills up to its brim'. It could be recalled that the late Prof Nanjundaswamy, founder of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha had led the farmer's movement in the state for over 15 years fighting for support price for sugarcane and also for the waiver of the power bills of the sugarcane growers as a form of incentive for growing sugarcane which is one of the few crops that goes into tremendous levels of value addition in the form of by-products and finished products.