SSS said the impact would be felt with its call for chakka jam across Maharashtra from today
With the state government refusing to engage with protestors who have launched an indefinite milk blockade in cities, Lok Sabha MP and farmers leader Raju Shetti's Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) has threatened to intensify agitation with a chakka jam to bring Maharashtra to a halt from Thursday.
"We are agitating peacefully for two days. If the government does not take note, dairy farmers will launch a chakka jam in Maharashtra from 6 am on Thursday with their families and animals. The protest will be intense, and the government will be responsible for it," said SSS leader Ravikant Tupkar.
The protestors are demanding that milk federations should hike procurement rates by Rs 5 per litre or the government should pay this as a subsidy to dairy farmers.
Milk distributors and retailers said that despite panic buying by some consumers, milk supplies to Mumbai were normal and dairies had maintained stocks to tide over shortfalls. Sources said milk powder could be used to produce milk.
However, SSS activists said the impact could be felt in Mumbai from Thursday due to dwindling collections coupled with the chakka jam.
An official from the Kolhapur District Cooperative Milk Producers Union, which sells the Gokul brand of milk said that on Wednesday morning milk collections were around 1.85 lakh litres versus the average 5.75 lakh litres. "However, we dispatched 40 milk tankers to Mumbai yesterday and another 16 on Wednesday," he added, stating they had enough stocks in Mumbai. Each tanker can carry up to 20,000 litres milk. Gokul collects 11 lakh litres and sells around 7.5 lakh milk in Mumbai.
An official from the state apex milk federation Mahananda said they were meeting the 1.93 lakh litres demand in Mumbai by transporting tankers with police escorts. Mahananda sells around 1.90 to 2 lakh litres in Mumbai and around 2.50 to 2.77 lakh litres in Maharashtra.
Senior officials from the dairy development department too claimed that the situation was normal.
Shetti, who is camping in Palghar to disrupt milk supply to Mumbai from Gujarat, accused the police of using inhuman force to crush the protest by harassing the families of his workers. Claiming that farmers had refused to sell milk, Shetti dared the state government to declare milk collection figures and said the state had not invited him for negotiations.
The Western Railway is running milk special trains from Gujarat to Mumbai by attaching these wagons to the Ahmedabad-Mumbai Passenger or Saurashtra Express. Though Shetti's associates claimed their presence in Dahanu which led to the plans being dropped, WR sources said that the milk wagons were separated from the train at Surat. "We shall send the milk wagons through some other route," said a WR official.
Each wagon can carry 44,000 litres of milk and provisions have been made to attach up to two containers per trip and in total 12 milk tankers for transport from Gujarat to Mumbai by this train.
SSS workers also ransacked milk tankers and disrupted collection and distribution at Jalna, Kolhapur, Pandharpur, Buldhana, Sangli, Beed, and Satara.
Late on Wednesday night, Shetti was contacted by water resources minister Girish Mahajan and called for a formal meeting to resolve the crisis.
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