Will sugar be the decisive issue in western Uttar Pradesh when the eight Lok Sabha constituencies here go to polls? The answer will become clear only on 23 May but on the ground sugarcane farmers are unhappy.
Over 1.50 crore people of western UP will cast their votes for the eight Lok Sabha seats here which are dominated by sugarcane politics. It is interesting to note that 70 per cent of this population is rural and a large majority of them are involved in agriculture.
Sugarcane is a major cash crop in these parts and the rural economy revolves around it. Obviously, the issues related to sugarcane dominates the discourse in western UP. Here the prominent issue has been the clearance of sugarcane dues which are still pending.
In the rural areas the sugarcane farmers talk of nothing but the clearance of their payments that sugar mills owe them. PM Narendra Modi in his rally in Meerut on Thursday had mentioned about the payments due to sugarcane farmers and promised to clear them soon.
But will the promise convince the sugarcane farmers and prompt them to vote in his favour?
“The farmers are not going to fall in any such trap,” said Mainpal Singh, a farmer from Malakpur village of Baghpat, adding that sugarcane will surely become a major issue in this election.
The farmers will be in a financial fix if their dues are not cleared soon.
“Marriages in the family are being postponed because of a paucity of funds,” said Singh, adding that the whole life of farmers here revolve around sugarcane which is not yielding them anything anymore.
The farmers are unhappy with the state government especially because the sugarcane minister Suresh Rana hails from Shamli district and is an MLA from Thana Bhawan assembly constituency.
Singh said that farmers had great expectations from him but they are yet to be fulfilled.
Sugarcane farmer Dharmendra of village Chabaria in Sardhana area said that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had promised that payment to sugarcane farmers will be made in 14 days of coming to power. This raised hopes of the farmers but nothing happened.
Initially they mounted pressure on sugar mills for payment but now the situation is same as it was two years back.
From time to time, farmers have been raising their voices demanding clearance of their dues and even staging protests, some under political flag and others under farmer organisations such as Bhartiya Kisan Union, in different parts of the western UP.
How much do the sugar mills owe? In 16 sugar mills of Meerut division a total of Rs 1,672 crore payment is due to farmers. While in 17 sugar mills of Saharanpur division Rs 1,825 crore is due and in 9 sugar mills of Bijnor district Rs 760 crore is the due. These dues are mainly of this crushing season.
Sugarcane farmers have tried to raise this issue strongly in recent months but it has failed not yet turned into a major poll issue.
At the time of assembly election in the state, RLD vice president Jayant Chaudhary had raised the issue of sugarcane farmers and coined a slogan ‘Ganna Ya Jinnah’, but it failed to get him a political mileage.
Recently, Congress leaders Priyanka Gandhi and Jyotriditya Scindia, through their tweets, blamed BJP government for not paying over Rs 10 crore dues of sugarcane farmers.
Prompt came the reply of CM Yogi Adityanath through his tweet in which he claimed that over Rs 58 thousand crore dues of farmers have been cleared, which is “a record”. Also the CM claimed that farmers are happy now. This he also delivered in his speech during Kumbh in Prayagraj.
But the farmers here do not understand the politics of tweets.
“Government after government (have come and gone) and still no one seems to be worrying about the farmers here who are in a pathetic condition,” said Mithan Tyagi of Rehedra village.
He said that only those farmers who have big farmlands are managing to survive in the present times. Real issues and promises would touch the cord of farmers and not the social media politics, he quipped.
Yet political parties and their candidates continue raising the issues of sugarcane farmers at the hustings.
RLD supremo Ch Ajit Singh, who is contesting the election from Muzzaffarnagar this time, is strongly raising the issues of farmers.
“We will have to work for farmers and bring back people together who had drifted away from each other in the past years,” he said while campaigning in his constituency.
Not only Ajit Singh, his son Jayant Choudhary, who is contesting from Baghpat, too, is according priority to the demands of sugarcane farmers.
RLD enjoys a wide base among farmers in this region, which has been their political backyard from the time of Chaudhary Charan Singh.
It is to be seen what and how much impact the issue of sugarcane farmers will have on political equations in this election.