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Updated At: Aug 17, 2022 07:29 AM (IST)

Farmers protest in front of a sugar mill in Phagwara. File photo

Tightening the noose around private sugar mills — owned by politicians and prominent businessmen, who have always had their way in the past — the AAP government is all set to audit their entire operations.

Meeting on cane SAP likely soon

Punjab has seven private sugar mills and nine cooperative ones. While the cooperative sugar mills have limited cane crushing capacity, the private ones collectively crush 70 per cent of the total sugarcane in the state. This, perhaps, has helped them dictate terms, including the decision on the state advised price of cane to be offered to farmers, to various governments in the past.

In the past decade, these private sugar mills have received hundreds of crores as subsidy from the previous SAD-BJP and Congress governments, on the pretext that they would not be able to pay the increased state advised price. While these mills got subsidy at Rs 50 per quintal in 2015-16, they received Rs 25 per quintal in 2018-19 and Rs 35 per quintal in 2021-22.

“But gone are the days of their monopoly,” Agriculture Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal told The Tribune. “Today, I have ordered to conduct end-to-end audit of all private sugar mills. Right from the quantity of cane they get for crushing to how much they actually crush to sugar extracted and finally, the cost at which it is sold by them — all operations will be a part of the audit. The total cost of making sugar will also be calculated as well as the profit made by them. How can these mills sell sugar at high market prices, while claiming subsidy from the state government? This is profiteering at the cost of taxpayers. The audit will help us understand why the private sugar mills do not pay their dues to farmers on time, while they continue to rake in moolah,” he added.

Earlier, the minister had said that the government will take over the operations of the private sugar mills if they do not clear the dues of cane growers. Inquiries made by The Tribune reveal that of the seven private sugar mills, three (AB Sugars, Nahar Sugars and Chadha Sugar Mill) have already cleared the dues. But the other four are yet to clear dues of Rs 126 crore. “Of these, the Golden Sandhar Sugar Mill owes Rs 72 crore to farmers and Indian Sucrose Limited owes Rs 47 crore. The other two mills — Rana Sugars and Bhagwanpura Sugar Mill — owe a small amount. The state government too is supposed to release its part of the subsidy to these mills,” a senior officer in the Agriculture Department told The Tribune.

Notably, the nine cooperative sugar mills have already cleared dues of Rs 200 crore to farmers for 2021-22 cane crushing season and another Rs 95 crore will be released in a month.

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The Tribune, now published from Chandigarh, started publication on February 2, 1881, in Lahore (now in Pakistan). It was started by Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia, a public-spirited philanthropist, and is run by a trust comprising four eminent persons as trustees.

The Tribune, the largest selling English daily in North India, publishes news and views without any bias or prejudice of any kind. Restraint and moderation, rather than agitational language and partisanship, are the hallmarks of the paper. It is an independent newspaper in the real sense of the term.

The Tribune has two sister publications, Punjabi Tribune (in Punjabi) and Dainik Tribune (in Hindi).

Remembering Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia

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