Pay cane growers’ dues or face protest: Sukhbir

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, November 29

Sukhbir Singh Badal, SAD president, on Thursday urged the Punjab government to immediately pay dues worth Rs 400 crore to sugarcane growers. He and other party leaders targeted Cabinet ministers Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and Navjot Singh Sidhu for “taking Punjab and Punjabis for a ride by indulging in false propaganda.”

The SAD was holding a protest against the “anti-people” policies of the state government, including non-payment of pending sugarcane payments.

Former minister Bikram Majithia trained his guns at Randhawa and said during the Vice-President’s foundation stone-laying ceremony at Dera Baba Nanak on Monday, Randhawa spent his entire time trying to figure out who would sit where. “He was interested only in knowing which dignitary will sit on the dais and who will not. Later, seeing Parkash Singh Badal’s name on the foundation stone, Randhawa blew a fuse. Let me tell him that the Modi government had organised the function and hence it was the discretion of the Union government to decide whose name will be on the stone and whose name will not be there. I pity Randhawa because his name was not there. I urge him, in his capacity as the Cooperation Minister, to ensure all the state-owned mills in Punjab to pay the farmers their dues rather than spend his time fighting over trivial issues,” said Majithia.

To this Randhawa retorted that Majithia should mind his business. “He is one leader who does not know what to speak and when to speak,” he said. Sukhbir urged the Punjab government to pay sugarcane farmers their dues at Rs 350 per quintal.