Prominent sugar mill owners including Kushagra Bajaj and Shishir Bajaj, Vivek Sarogi and Gautam Dalmiya have been served with police summons by the Uttar Pradesh government for complaints against their units for under-weighing of sugarcane bought from farmers.
The non-bailable FIRs filed under Section 3/7 of the IPC has named 64 sugar mills owners, after ?widespread complaints of mass underweighment of sugarcane by the mills,? said a senior cane department official. He said under the Essential Commodities Act, it is a continuing process to check for discrepancies. ?We have strict orders from the government to crack down on under-weighment of cane and irregularity on the part of the millers to make profits,? said the official on condition of anonymity.
Those names include Vivek Saraogi, CMD, Balrampur Chini; Dhruv Mohan Sawhney, MD, Triveni group; Gautam Goel, CMD, DSM group; Siddhartha Sriram, CMD, Mawana group; Gautam Dalmiya of Dalmiya group; Gurmeet Singh Maan, owner of Simbhaoli group; Mahendra Kumar Modi, GM & MD of Modi group; Kushagra Bajaj CMD and Shishir Bajaj MD of Bajaj Hindusthan group; CA Naupani, CMD Birla group and RK Morarka, MD, Dwarikesh group.
While mill owners refused to go on record for the reasons behind this move, they said they were clueless as to why the state government was targeting the industry. ?Every year, this exercise is undertaken by the state government in which our sugar mills are raided by officials of the cane department and FIRs are lodged against owners and occupiers of the mills. But we fail to understand how irregularities can be perpetuated by the industry on such a mass scale in the state every year,? said one of them. He acknowledged that while some mills may be under-weighing cane, it is not possible it do it on such a large scale across the state.
The millers say the irregularities are often due to local officials and weighment clerks who are government appointees. ?It is high-handedness on the part of the government to book high-ranking officials and owners of companies for the act. It is not the job of senior officials to indulge in acts which can call for invoking the draconian Section 3/7 of the Essential Commodities Act,? said an official from the Indian Sugar Mills Association on condition of anonymity.
Sources in the sugar industry alleged the government was using arm-twisting tactics which would make it difficult for industry to survive in the state. In fact, lending strength to the industry, the main opposition party in the state, the Samajwadi Party has come out in support of the industry and stated that the Mayawati government is using the FIRs as a pressure tactic for extorting money from the industry on the eve of the chief minister?s birthday.