Rs 24 crore plan for sugarcane development in Haryana

Chandigarh, May 4 (UNI) The Haryana government has chalked out an ambitious plan of Rs 24.38 crore for development of sugarcane in the state.

The government has also decided to set up a sugar mill at Assandh in Karnal didtrict and a distillery at Shahbad in Kurukshetra district, Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said today.

The sugarcane development plan involved tissue culture technology, Biological Control of pest, supply of heat treated seed material besides developing high sugar improved variety, Mr Hooda said while reviewing the functioning of sugar mills here.

He said the land for the Shahbad distillery had already been acquired and permission had also been obtained from the Central Pollution Control Board and the State Pollution Control Board.

The Chief Minister said with a view to popularising pit planting method, the government had decided to provide 50 per cent subsidy to the farmers.

This subsidy would be utilised for purchasing pit digging machine costing Rs 50,000. With this method, farmers could get two crops of sugarcane and wheat simultaneously in a year besides a higher sugarcane yield.

Mr Hooda said in order to improve the variety of sugarcane and to increase its per acre yield, a Tissue Culture laboratory was being set up at Karnal at a cost of Rs 1.50 crore besides setting up of four Bilogical Control Laboratories at Sonepat, Jind, Shahbad and Meham.

He said that farmers' service centres were also being set up in the premises of sugar mills which would provide technical know-how to the farmers, provide good quality seeds and pesticides and diesel and petrol.

Mr Hooda said that during the current crushing season, the Cooperative Sugar Mills had crushed over 196 lakh quintal cane, as against 182 lakh quintals crushed during the last season, and produced 18.81 lakh quintals of sugar.

The Chief Minister said Cooperative Sugar Mills in the state had paid entire cane payments to the farmers amounting to Rs 272 crore whereas a sum of Rs 209 crore had been paid to the farmers for purchase of their sugarcane during the last crushing season.

He said the sugarcane price had been increased from Rs 117 per quintal to Rs 135 which was the highest in the country. With this increase, the farmers of the state would get an addtional revenue of Rs 63 crore.

UNI MA MP PC2006