Allahabad High Court today asked the Uttar Pradesh government to take "immediate" action for ensuring payment of dues, running into thousands of crores, to sugarcane farmers in the state.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice Dilip Gupta, passing the order on a petition also asked the state government to "persuade" sugar mill owners for payment of dues to farmers at the earliest and ordered that the state's Cane Commissioner shall be held accountable in the event of "breach of the court order".
The Public Interest Litigation was filed by Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan.
It was alleged in the PIL that several farmers in the state have been driven to suicide as the process of recovery of loans given to sugarcane growers was being initiated, even though the cultivators were unable to get their dues from the mill-owners who were allegedly "hand-in-glove" with government officials.
