Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Government today announced that a full sugarcane will be given along with the Pongal package that included Rs 1,000 and one kg each of rice and sugar to all the ration cardholders in the State.
A decision to provide sugarcane along with the Pongal gift hamper was taken at a meeting Chief Minister M.K.Stalin held with his Ministerial colleagues and higher officials at the State Secretariat.
Accepting the demands of the farmers, who had been staging protests across the State demanding the government to include sugarcane along with the package by procuring it from farmers, the government decided to provide one full sugarcane along with the package.
Following this, Stalin will launch the function on January nine instead of January two as announced earlier, and issuance of tokens to all cardholders in the State will take place from January 3 to 8.
Stalin had on December 22 announced that with a view to celebrate the harvest festival, all rice cardholders and the families living in Sri Lankan Tamils Rehabilitation camps will be given a Pongal package of Rs 1,000, one kg rice and one kg sugar.
About 2.19 crore cardholders in the State will be benefitted by this package and the State government will incur an expenditure of Rs 2,356.67 crore.
Since then, sugarcane farmers had been staging various forms of protest as non inclusion of sugarcane in the package will affect them badly as the government would not procure them and that they will get low price from the market for their produce.
Political parties, including the Opposition AIADMK, and the ruling DMK’s ally CPI(M) have urged the government to include sugarcane in the Pongal package as demanded by the farmers.
Earlier in the day, AIADMK announced a protest demonstration on January two in Tiruvannamalai against omission of sugarcane in Pongal gift hamper.
Following this, Stalin chaired a meeting today and decided to include sugarcane in the Pongal package.
