Windfall for sugar cooperative

Addressing NCP supporters at the overpacked Land Development Bank hall here, Pawar reminded them of the previous Lok Sabha elections where he had taken off from Satara and had finished winning 37 seats in the State. The NCP would recapitulate the performance during the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections and would win 175 seats in the State assembly elections, Pawar said.

There was no need to coax those who have remained away from the NCP, he said with an oblique reference to a few Congress stalwarts in Satara, including Karad MP Prithwiraj Chavan.

Earlier, signed for a three-and-a-half year term with retrospective effect from January 1, 1998 the arbitration will benefit thousands of permanent and daily wage sugar workers. The average wage hike awarded to an individual sugar worker amounted to Rs 500 to Rs 796. The cooperative sugar sector in the State would have to sustain an additional burden of Rs 98.28 crore, Pawar announced to a well-attended rally.

Touching upon a barrage of issues related to the sugar sector, Pawar lashed out against the Vajpayee government8217;s decision to import sugar from Pakistan. Referring to the ongoing anti-infiltration operation in Kargil, Pawar, the former defence minister, asked sugar workers to defeat the reactionary elements that were indirectly helping an unfriendly neighbour.

The Centre8217;s sugar import policies notwithstanding the bumper production would jeopardise the indigenous sugar sector, he said.

The interests of managements and sugar workers have been interwoven, Pawar said before he made a fervent appeal to the sugar workers, without naming anybody in particular, to fight against a government that deviced iniquitous designs for the sugar sector. 8220;We will have to work together to pull down the anti-labour government in New Delhi and Mumbai,8221; he said.

Hitting at the administration for its alleged anti-labour role, Pawar stated that there was an urgent need to support families of the workers rendered jobless due to industrial sickness.

Delhi would not sustain without Maharashtra, declared Pawar at the Satara rally and called upon the concerted efforts to rebuild the nation with encouraging new faces. Lambasting the Congress leadership in the State, president designate of the NCP8217;s state unit Chhagan Bhujbal stated that grass-roots workers supported the NCP.