Cotton farmers from Wardha district, who were on a dharna in Nagpur for the last 13 days over non-payment of dues amounting to Rs 8 crore by a factory owner, ended their agitation following the interv
Cotton farmers from Wardha district, who were on a dharna in Nagpur for the last 13 days over non-payment of dues amounting to Rs 8 crore by a factory owner, ended their agitation following the intervention of the Maharashtra government. The move came immediately after leader of opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil raised the issue in the Legislative Assembly seeking justice for the farmers.
The farmers from Seloo area of the district claimed they had not been paid their dues worth Rs 8 crore by a ginning-pressing factory owner for over a year. The cotton growers whose representatives had a meeting with the ministers concerned in Mumbai on March 9 were visited by resident deputy collector (RDC) of Wardha Vaibhav Narwadkar on Friday.
Mr Narwadkar met the agitating farmers here and conveyed to them the government's decision to take steps such as auctioning the unit to resolve the payment issue. About 400 farmers were denied payment by Sunil Talatule, who owns Shrikrishna Ginning and Pressing Factory that bought cotton from them through Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee between November 2014-May 2015. Talatule, however, failed to make payment. In the Assembly on Friday, Mr Vikhe-Patil even alleged that Talatule was an RSS member and hence the farmers were protesting outside the organisation’s headquarters. However, Speaker of the house Rahibhau Rathod objected to the statement and removed the remark from the record.
Subsequently, the farmers approached the police, which registered a case of alleged cheating and arrested Talatule on July 25, 2015. He was later released on bail. The cotton growers, fed up by the delay in payment, took out a march to headquarters of RSS demanding that the saffron outfit put pressure on Talatule to pay them. Claiming that Talatule’s father Prabhakar Talatule was one of the founding fathers of the RSS, the cotton growers sought intervention of the organisation into the matter. The march was foiled on February 28 by the police and since then farmers had been staging protest near RBI square.
Mr Narwadkar assured the agitating farmers the factory would be auctioned in the first week of April and the proceeds would be used to repay their dues, one of the agitators, Ram Pathak said.
