Lucknow: Without giving any commitment to hike the State Advisory Price(SAP) of sugar cane, the Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday said that the state would create a record in the coming crushing season when it will produce one crore metric tonnes of sugar despite the fact that at least four sugar mills were closed this season. Now the UP government has decided to open a joint bank account of the mills and district sugar cane officer so that the mills pay 85 per cent of the revenue they collected from sugar sale to the cane farmers. State minister for sugarcane development Suresh Rana said here that the new crushing season will start from the end of this month and by November 15, all the mills would start crushing. This time, there is huge production of sugar cane with an increase of 2.45 lakh hectares of cultivation. " We are expecting that 120 sugar mills would crush sugarcane this season and the sugar production in the state would cross one crore tonne barrier, which will be highest in the country," he told reporters here. Mr Rana, who was non committal on the hike in the rate of the sugarcane prices, said a committee set up by the government would decide the matter. He, however, assured that all the dues of around Rs 1100 crore pending from the last crushing season, would be paid before the start of the new crushing season. "The government would reopen the closed down cooperative sector Pipraich and Munderwa (Gorakhpur) sugar mills this season besides the capacity of of Moidumpur (Ghaizabad) and Ramola (Baghpat) sugar mills have been increased," he said. The minister said of the total 33 lakh cane farmers in the state, around just 3 lakhs are linked with M-Kisan portal but by this financial year all the farmers would be linked. He said a toll free number -18001213203 have been set up for the assistance of the cane farmers. "We have distributed 80 lakh quintal of improved seeds to the farmers while 4,500 hectares of land has been provided with drip irrigation facilities due to shortage of water. The minister also said three mills, which were sold to a private company by the previous Mayawati regime, have also been asked to open. These are mills at Amroha, Bidvi and Bulandshahr. UNI
