The Hindu Business Line : Soaring sugar prices trigger cane war

Initially, the action began with a couple of mills in Uttaranchal, including Ms Anjali Sawhney's Mahalakshmi Sugar Mills at Iqbalpur and Mr Rajan Adlakha's Uttam Sugar Mills at Libberheri (both in Hardwar), paying Rs 120 per quintal for cane sourced from neighbouring districts of Uttar Pradesh, that too on a `nakad' (instant cash) basis. This was sometime in mid-November, when the current 2004-05 sugar season (October-September) had just started.

But now, mills in UP have also followed suit. On Tuesday, Mr Dhruv Sahwney's Triveni Engineering & Industries Ltd announced a price of Rs 120-125 per quintal for the cane being supplied to its two factories at Khatauli (Muzaffarnagar) and Deoband (Saharanpur). And today, it was the turn of Mr Somansh Prakash's Tikaula Sugar Mills (Muzaffarnagar) to announce the same price, which is way above the Rs 107-112 per quintal State Adviced Price (SAP) declared by the UP and Uttaranchal Governments for the current season.

The move by these mills to offer rates much above the SAP has affected cane supplies to other factories, including the Titawi (Muzaffarnagar) unit of Mr Siddarth Shriram's Siel Ltd and the Mansurpur plant of Mr Ashok Kumar Goel's Dhampur Sugar Mills.

Since the Titawi unit falls in between the Khatauli and Deoband factories and the Mansurpur unit lies near the Uttam and Khatauli plants, farmers supplying cane to them have gone on dharna, demanding a price equal to, if not more than, Rs 120-125 per quintal.

"So far, it was the mills, traders and speculators who were benefiting from soaring sugar prices. Now, the farmers too want to join the party. It is a recipe for sheer anarchy", remarked a market analyst.

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