Is Telangana Government reviving Nizam Sugar Factory?

Hyderabad: Will the State Government revive the Nizam Sugar Factory? An indication to this effect was given by Minister for Panchayat Raj Errabelli Dayakar Rao on Monday. He said that discussions were going on in this regard.

The government, it is learnt, is once again focussing its attention on the possibility of revival of this unit since the Centre has refused to procure boiled rice and the State Government now wants to encourage farmers reduce paddy cultivation and go in for alternate crops like sugarcane and palm oil on large scale.

The Nizam Sugar Factory also known as Nizam Deccan Sugars Limited (NDSL) founded by the seventh Nizam in 1937, is situated in Bodhan town of Nizamabad district in Telangana state.

It had the distinction of being the largest sugar factory in Asia but has been closed decades ago. The factory was privatised by former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu in the undivided Andhra Pradesh. His successor Y S Rajasekhar Reddy promised to revive it but it did not happen. The TRS had also promised of reviving the factory within 100 days of coming to power during the agitation for separate Telangana as well as during elections.

The factory management announced layoff on December 23, 2015 leaving over 55,000 farmers dependent on sugarcane farming and 306 factory workers in a shock. This led to reduction of crop area from 1.1 lakh acres to about 50,000 acres and there has been a fall in production of cane to 20 lakh tonnes.

In 2018, the State Government had written to NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal) stating that it had plans to revive the Nizam Sugar Factory. But to date there has been no progress. Recently, Nizamabad MP Dharmapuri Arvind wrote a letter to the Chief Minister to revive three units of NSF stating that the Centre had increased MSP for the sugarcane, which would lead to increase the income of farmers.