In a total volte-face, the chief minister of Telangana State, K.Chandrasekhar Rao announced in the assembly that “Nizam Sugar Factory is a closed chapter now. We will not take it over,” he said. The same KCR had earlier promised that the government would take over the factory because of its `historic significance’ for Telangana.
Instead, he decided to put the entire onus on the previous governments and said that “the Congress lost a good opportunity to revive the Nizam Sugar Factory (NSF) during its 10-year rule between 2004 and 2014. The situation is not conducive to reopen the biggest sugar factory in Asia unless the sugarcane growers come forward to shoulder the responsibility of running it.”
“The farmers have switched to other crops as the factory has been closed since a decade ago. Now, they are not willing to grow sugarcane again,” KCR said, adding, “We have consulted the local farmers. A group of 400 farmers were taken to Maharashtra for study but even after that the farmers are not willing to cultivate sugarcane. The Nizam Sugar Factory requires 10 lakh tonnes of sugarcane for crushing. Now, only one lakh tonne of sugarcane is available,” he argued.
Though the state government was willing to foot the bill for overhauling all the machinery in the three units of NSF with one unit at Bodhan in Nizamabad district, another at Mumbojipally in Medak district and a third one at Muthyampet village in Karimnagar district, and hand them over to farmers, the latter were not ready to form a cooperative to run the units.
In fact, KCR also said that if NSF could be run by a farmers' society as in Maharashtra and if the farmers were ready to do so, the government was ready to settle the payments to the private operator and take over the sugar plants.
He also recalled that he was the one who fought for farmers dependent on NSF and demanded that the factories should not be privatized. But due to various reasons, the factories were now locked out. The irony is that when KCR was on the campaign trail, before becoming the first chief minister of the new state of Telangana, this was one among the many promises he made saying that the Nizam Sugar Factory (NSF) of Bodhan would be taken over by the government.
He tried to take over this industry from Delta Sugars. For the people of Telangana, the Nizam Sugar Factory is not just another industry. It is the symbol for industrialization under the Nizam’s rule. This industry was handed over to Delta Sugars in a joint venture during the Telugu Desam regime which believed in privatization.
KCR now says that instead of its present status as a private partner in a joint venture, it should be made to run on its own for the benefit of sugarcane farmers. While admitting that he had promised to take over the factory during the Telangana statehood agitation and also after TRS came to power, he said, “The situation has changed during the last 15 years. Several sugarcane farmers have opted for other crops. There is not enough sugarcane production here. Otherwise, we can make NSF financially viable even now.”
The Nizam Sugar Factory was established in 1937 during the time of the last Nizam of Hyderabad state, Mir Osman Ali Khan. It was established on around 15,000 acres and the location was named Shakkar Nagar and was the largest sugar factory in Asia at that time and continues to be so. This factory gave major employment during the Nizam period and subsequently. That is till in 2002 the factory was privatised by the then chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and handed it over to Delta Sugars to run it but the factory began incurring heavy losses and eventually had to be shut down.
When the Congress came to power under Dr Y.S.Rajasekhar Reddy, a legislative committee recommended that the government should take over the factory. But before that step could be taken, YSR died in a tragic accident and the issue was not taken any further till KCR brought it up during his election campaign and promised all kinds of stuff, including taking over the factory and restoring its glory.
The farmers of the region, meanwhile have been fighting for the last 15 years, asking the government to revive the co-operative sugar factory that was once regarded as bell-weather for the sugarcane industry in the state. Telangana PCC president Uttam Kumar Reddy, along with other senior leaders, also conducted a Congress party ‘Maha Padayatra’ demanding revival of Nizam Sugar Factory sometime in October.
Then he had said that the closure had badly hit thousands of factory workers and sugarcane farmers. He asked the government to ensure immediate release of salary arrears of all factory workers. The Congress leader maintainted that the closure of the NSF forced the farmers to change cropping pattern and no assistance was provided to them by the state government which caused heavy losses to thousands of farmers.
KCR agreed that the government was willing to constitute an all-party committee to work out modalities relating to the takeover, including the payment that should be made for the current owners. The all-party committee could interact with the sugarcane farmers under the NSF and convince them to revert to sugarcane cultivation for reviving the plant. He said the government was keen on handing over the operations to farmers as the revived unit should not pose financial problems if the government took over its maintenance.
While KCR insisted that the farmers were not willing to form a cooperative and run the unit, the opposition leader K. Jana Reddypointed out to the CM that some farmers were ready to run it. KCR then said that, “If that’s true, I am ready to hand over the factory to them. I am ready to pay Rs 200 crore or whatever amount to a joint venture private partner to acquire their stakes. I am also ready to offer the chairman post of the cooperative society to you or your MLA T. Jeevan Reddy if you can run the factory. Run it, but it should not become a burden on the government. It should be run by farmers themselves. I shall also allot money for overhauling the factory machinery, so that it can begin operations immediately.”
