Maharashtra is planning to revive defunct cooperative sugar mills by taking them over and leasing them out to those who can run them efficiently, reports Livemint.
Maharashtra is India’s second-largest producer of sugar. Most of cooperative sugar mills controlled by politicians are either shut or ailing.
The BJP government has formed a committee to conduct a financial and technical evaluation of the assets of at least 40 shuttered sugar factories and submit a report soon.
Co-operative sugar factories in Maharashtra, mostly based in western Maharashtra and Marathwada, have been one of the main levers of the state’s political economy. They have been directly or indirectly controlled by politicians from the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Maharashtra has 175 co-operative sugar factories, the highest in the country. However, only 93 are functional. Of the rest, 33 have been acquired under the Sarfaesi Act while six have been sold by the government. Three co-operative sugar factories have been bought over by private parties.