Polur sugar mill to pay Rs 26 cr dues to ryots by March

Farmers were enraged that though the 4000 TCD (tonnes crushed daily) capacity mill registered their cane over 2000 acres, it didn’t start operations in the current crushing season, resulting in nearly 10,000 tonnes being diverted to the Cheyyar cooperative sugar mill and another 45,000 tonnes to the Bannari Amman sugar mill located at Thandarampattu in the district.

After agitating for two days in front of the mill in Polur, affected farmers switched their area of agitation to the District Collector’s office for the past two days. Subsequent talks held between the affected parties monitored by Collector KS Kandasamy resulted in the above agreement being hammered out to the satisfaction of all, officials said.

However, many were surprised at the Polur mill not taking up operations as it had produced 1.63 lakh quintals of sugar last year. The highest quantity crushed was in 2016-17 when it produced 4.17 lakh quintals from 4.63 lakh tonnes of cane.

It may be recalled that Vellore sugar mill officials anticipated receiving a minimum of 50,000 tonnes of cane from the Polur unit as cane from non-functioning mills at Dharmapuri, Ambur and Tirupattur were all diverted to the Vellore unit in the current crushing year.

Meanwhile, with just one more day of crushing left before the Vellore mill stops operations in the current year -- crushing started on December 21 last year -- on Friday, the facility hopes to crush 1.25 lakh tonnes of cane to produce 1.05 lakh quintals of sugar, mill chairman M Anandan said.