A meeting called by Union Food Minister Sharad Yadav to discuss the crisis facing sugar mills and sugarcane farmers ended in a deadlock as none of the participants budged from their stand.
This has all the potential of a political stand-off. The problem arose when the Uttar Pradesh government, in a year of glut of sugarcane, announced a price of Rs 95 per quintal to be paid to farmers by sugar mills for procuring sugarcane.
Millers insisted that the state government had no authority to announce a price superseding the central minimum statutory price of Rs 69.50 per quintal and got a court order to substantiate their argument.
Alarmed at the crisis faced by sugarcane growers, who initially found mills quoting a lower buying price because of huge supply and bigger piled up inventories, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati took it upon herself to arrive in Delhi and announce that the central government had to fall in line and that she was determined
