PUNE: The sugar commissionerate has kept the
licences
of almost 100
sugar mills
in the state on hold for this crushing season because of their failure to pay fair and remunerative price-based payments to the farmers for the previous crushing season.
Many sugar factories are rushing to raise funds to pay the arrears of the farmers at a short notice. The crushing season for 2020-21 officially starts from Thursday. Sugar commissioner Shekhar Gaikwad told TOI that 90 sugar factories had been allotted licences for crushing as they had cleared all the payments to the farmers.
Sources in the sugar commissionerate said that 20 sugar factories had paid the arrears to the farmers in the past three days after their licences were put on hold.
Gaikwad added he expects some more factories to disburse the arrears to the farmers. “I expect 100 sugar factories can be granted if they paid FRP based arrears”, he said.
Officials said the sugar factories had been asked time and again to clear the arrears and not to start crushing without permission. The factories would be fined Rs 1,000 for every tonne if they start crushing sugar cane without obtaining a license. The amount of such fine was Rs 500 for every tonne in the last year.
Sugar factories were asked to apply for crushing licences till September 30. As many as 190 private and cooperative mills in
Maharashtra had applied for the crushing licence.
Officials said that 97 sugar factories have been served notices under Revenue Recovery Code (RRC) as they did not make FRP based payment to the farmers.
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