Sugar cane crushing unlikely before Maha assembly polls: Experts
The sugarcane crushing season in Maharashtra may start only after the state assembly elections, to ensure that cane cutters vote before leaving for work. Assembly elections are expected around mid-November. Last year, the season was delayed due to low rainfall. This year, Karnataka has also delayed crushing until November 15. Maharashtra’s start date will be decided in October.
Kolhapur: The sugar cane crushing season in Maharashtra is likely to start only after the state assembly elections to ensure that cane cutters exercise their electoral franchise before leaving for cane-growing regions for work, industry experts said. A large number of sugar cane cutters come from the Marathwada region, who travel to the cane-growing districts and return to their village after three to four months after the end of the crushing season.
Vijay Autade, a sugar industry expert, said, “Assembly elections in Maharashtra are expected later this year. Given the rough estimate, the voting is unlikely to take place before the middle of Nov. Politicians will have to ensure that the cutters move to cane-growing districts only after exercising their electoral franchise. Therefore, it is unlikely that the cane crushing will actually begin before the voting.”
Last year, the mills were allowed to start the crushing only after Nov 1, unlike previous years when the season began on Oct 15. Besides, there was a shortage of rainfall in the cane-producing regions last year, which led to a decline in production. To ensure that the cane ripens properly and the optimum level of sugar is produced, the cane crushing season was delayed by 15 days.
This year, neighbouring Karnataka has also declared that the mills in Karnataka would not start crushing before Nov 15.
The experts said 208 sugar mills were operational in Maharashtra in the last season, which crushed around 1,076.16 lakh metric tonnes of cane.
A senior official of the state cooperation department said in the first week of Oct, a high-powered committee meeting under CM Eknath Shinde would take place to announce the date for the cane crushing season.
According to the officials from the state election commission, the code of conduct for the assembly election may be declared immediately after the results for the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections are out on Oct 8. The commission is looking to complete the updation of electoral rolls and identification of the polling booths before Oct 10.
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