Tobacco board reduces penalty for licence renewal

Mysuru: The Tobacco Board has reduced the penalty for the renewal of licences of farmers who had sold less produce than the fixed quota.

The board announced that tobacco growers selling less than 50 percent produce of the fixed quantity will have to pay a penalty of Rs 1500 for every barn and for less than 25 percent of the fixed quantity will have to pay a penalty of Rs 2,500 for every barn to renew their registration. Mysuru-Kodagu BJP Member of Parliament Prathap Simha urged the farmers to renew their licences on tobacco as soon as possible.

He said, "Mysuru tobacco farmers depend on tobacco cultivation for their livelihood. They are growing the crops despite weather extremes. A target was set to achieve 97 million kg of tobacco last year. But with a yield difference, only 68 million kg of tobacco was grown due to adverse weather conditions." Previously, farmers who had sold less than half of the fixed quota were fined. Sales less than 25 percent of the fixed quota were fined Rs 5,000 and sales less than 50 percent were fined Rs 3,000. Simha had written a letter to the Centre appealing to reduce the penalty and tobacco crop licence renewal cost to the Commerce Secretary B V R Subramaniam, Tobacco Board Chairman Y Raghunadha Babu and Executive Director A Sridhar Babu, mentioning the hardships of the farmers in Mysuru.