On Wednesday, Bhaskar Gardhe gave sugarcane cutting a miss and travelled to his village Chinchkhandi in Beed district’s Ambajogai taluka to cast his vote. “We hired a car and travelled from Nanded to Ambajogai to cast our votes,” he said. Gardhe, who is a muggadam (middle-man) employed with Bhaurao Chavan SSK in Nanded, admitted that this meant the loss of a day's pay but felt it was their duty to exercise their right. “There are around 200 people from our village. Almost half of them went for voting,” he added. The issue of voting rights for cane cutters had become a major bone of contention in Maharashtra's sugar industry as the sugar commissionerate had not issued permission for crushing till the last moment. Officially, the sugarcane crushing season was to start on November 15 but with the Election Commission of India (ECI) fixing the polls on November 20, the question of voting became a problem for cane cutters. Unlike Uttar Pradesh, sugar mills in Maharashtra arrange for the harvest and transportation of cane with the cane cutters mainly coming from Beed, Nanded, Ahmednagar, Yavatmal, Amravati, and Nandurbar regions. Of the 12.5 lakh cane cutters, around 5 lakh are from Beed. Located in Kallam taluka of Dharashiv district (erstwhile Osmanabad), Natural Sugars and Allied Industries (NSAI) arranged for the travel of their cane cutters from Beed and nearby areas. Thus Ankush Jadhav, a muggadam from the area, said he took his 20 labourers to vote in the village. “While this does translate into a day's wage loss, voting is important,” he said. However, Jeewan Rathod, chairman of the Maharashtra Sugarcane Cutters and Transporters Association, said that around 60 per cent of the cane cutters have not been able to return to their villages to vote. “Those who are employed in mills nearby came back, but those who are in faraway regions have not,” he pointed out.
