Irate cotton farmers on Monday confined Adilabad Collector M. Jagan Mohan and officials of the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) to a cabin of the weighment bridge in agriculture market yard for about 3 hours demanding remunerative price for their produce. They had earlier entered the cabin to hold talks over fixing an acceptable price for the produce but the stalemate continued well into the night with various price formulas put forward by the CCI and private traders getting rejected by farmers.
Protests by farmers started as soon as the traditional auction of cotton which had arrived in the market took place at the commencement of trading for the season.
Farmers took to streets forcing a shut down of the market in town and blocking flow of traffic on the old NH 7 at the busy Punjab hotel chowk demanding remunerative price for their produce.
As the standoff extended well into the afternoon, Collector M. Jagan Mohan arrived at the market to mediate between the CCI, private traders and farmers who had brought about 15,000 quintals of cotton to the market during the day. As he failed to make any headway, farmers raised slogans of “Collector down down” to express their resentment over his failure of exerting pressure over the CCI and private traders. The CCI officials had initially quoted the price of Rs. 4,050 per quintal, which is the minimum support price (MSP), the norm being the moisture content remaining pegged at 8 per cent.
As this condition was not acceptable to farmers who contended that cotton brought to markets early in the season had a natural moisture content of even 25 per cent the officials came out with an offer of Rs. 3,880 per quintal for a moisture content of 16 per cent.
Simultaeneously, private traders quoted a price of Rs. 3,600 per quintal without any condition on moisture content in the cotton.
Later, the Collector came up with a middle level price of Rs. 3,700 per quintal which again was rejected by farmers.
