Centre disbands sugar development council

New Delhi, April 19

It’s curtains for the Development Council for Sugar Industry (DCSI), a statutory body set up in 1954 to grant licences to set up mills, but has now lost relevance after the decontrol and de-licensing of the sugar sector.

The Centre has disbanded the body and an order in this regard has been issued by the Food Ministry, which said it has dissolved DCSI with effect from March 12.

“...the Central Government on being satisfied that DCSI should cease to continue in being and it is in the public interest so to do, hereby dissolves,” the order read.

The exercise is part of the NDA government’s efforts to weed out archaic laws and committees. The government has already done away with mechanisms like empowered group of ministers and group of ministers prevalent during the UPA rule.

The 25-member DCSI has been disbanded because it lost relevance after the government de-licensed the sugar industry in 1998 and the need for a licence to set up new sugar mills was dispensed with.

That apart, removal of government control on the sugar sector—mandatory supply to the government at subsidised rates for PDS and sale in the open market—in 2013 took away the very purpose of its existence.

DCSI was set up under the Industries (Development and Regulation) Act. —PTI