Food Minister Sharad Yadav today admitted in the Rajya Sabha that funds collected from the sugar industry as cess and deposited in the Sugar Development Fund (SDF), meant for the modernisation and development of the sugar industry, were used to finance the subsidy for creating a buffer stock.
Yadav agreed this was not the purpose of the fund, but said the crisis in the sugar industry would have become serious if the SDF had not been accessed. MPs suggested that in view of the crisis, collection of the sugar cess should be suspended for this year. This, however, did not elicit any response from the minister.
Yadav was responding to supplementaries in the Rajya Sabha following a question from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Ram Jethmalani.
More From This Section
Jethmalani raised the issue in the context of a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), which has given an account of the misuse of the SDF.
Citing the CAG report, Jethmalani said the government had committed a criminal breach of trust by collecting nearly Rs 3,000 crore from consumers but spending only Rs 21 crore on research and development projects for sugarcane. He said just four projects had been completed though several had been funded by the SDF.
Yadav said of an initial corpus of Rs 3,400 crore in the SDF, Rs 2,800 crore had been given to the food ministry by the finance ministry. Seventy-nine per cent of the fund had been used, while Rs 300 crore was left. There had been reports of