CM YOGI RAISES SUGARCANE MSP BY ₹25/QUINTAL

LUCKNOW: Ahead of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday announced ₹25 per quintal hike in the purchase price of sugarcane in the state.

“We have decided that the price of the sugarcane variety (early variety) for which ₹325 per quintal was paid to farmers would be increased to ₹350. My government has also decided to increase the price of ordinary sugarcane variety to ₹340 (per quintal).the government has also decided to hike the value of the less yielding variety of sugarcane by ₹25 per quintal,” he said, addressing a farmers’ meeting convened by the BJP’S farmers’ wing in Lucknow.

Previously, farmers were paid ₹315 per quintal for ordinary variety of sugarcane. In UP, there are three varieties of sugarcane — early , mid-late and late. The early variety of sugarcane are those that mature earlier than the others. “The early variety constitutes 97 per cent of the sugarcane cultivated (in the state), followed by 2.7 per cent of the ordinary variety and the rejected variety, which constitutes barely 0.3 per cent,” state Sugarcane Development and Sugar Mills Minister Suresh Rana told PTI.

The public meeting comes a day ahead of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha’s call for a nationwide strike against three farm laws on Monday.

Slamming the opposition parties in the state, Adityanath said, “The governments of SP and BSP parties had done the work of ruining the livelihood of sugarcane farmers by selling sugar mills. Today, our government is working to bring a change in the lives of sugarcane farmers by running old sugar mills and establishing new sugar mills.”