New Delhi: The Allahabad high court on Tuesday issued a notice to the cane commissioner of Uttar Pradesh asking him to show cause as to why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against him for disobeying the court’s March 2017 order in which the court had asked the cane commissioner to resolve the issue of waiving off of interest amounts on pending cane dues within four months. As per law, sugar mills are required to clear the pending dues of farmers within 14 days from the day they are assigned receipts. If the mill defaults, it has to pay the farmer – in addition to the principal – an interest on the amount due at the rate of 15% per annum for the period of the delay.During the 2012-2015 period, sugar mills in UP defaulted on payments and owed farmers Rs 2,000 crore as interest, in addition to the principal. In April 2015, they approached Akhilesh Yadav, the then chief minister of the state, with the proposition that the interest dues be waived off as the ‘mills were making losses and could not afford to pay the interest’. Yadav agreed and in October 2016 decided to waive off the interest amounts that were owed by sugar mills to farmers.The Allahabad high court was approached by farmer organisations against the decision, and in March 2017, the court quashed the UP government’s decision, stating: “The state government waived the interest, citing mills’ inability to pay in view of low sugar prices. But by that logic, shouldn’t the interest being paid by farmers on loans from state-owned and cooperative banks also have been waived? In this case, farmers were basically supplying cane to mill at zero interest, even while borrowing at 10-15% or more themselves.”Despite the court order, sugar mills are yet to pay the Rs 2,000 crore interest amount that they owe to farmers for the 2012-15 period. A consequence of the non-implementation of the law and the court order is that sugar mills and the Cane department in UP assume that the interest amounts are not to be paid to farmers. For the 2017-18 season, sugarcane farmers in UP are owed almost Rs 10,000 crores, three months after the season ended in June. When the UP government releases figures for pending cane dues in the state, the amount of interest that, by law, should accrue to farmers owing to delay in payment beyond 14 days, is not included. Thus, the actual amount of pending dues to farmers in UP would be higher than what is acknowledged by the government.“Once the mill owners have to pay 15% interest, they will not hold back the farmers payment even for a day. Ensuring that they have to pay interest, will put an end to the problem of pending cane dues that we see year after year,” said VM Singh, convenor of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan and a petitioner in the case. The Allahabad high court will now hear the matter on October 30.