State govt deadline of a month for private sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh to settle their sugarcane payment dues to farmers expiring. An estimated Rs 4,000 crore of payments are still pending. Ensuring timely and full payment to cane farmers is top priority and there would be no dithering on this responsibility and cane payments of Rs 5,200 crore had been settled in a month. During earlier regimes, cane payment arrears would drag on to October-November. On March 23, the CM had asked private millers to settle arrears and warned of strict action against defaulters. Sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh have urged the state government to change the pricing for sugarcane and end the reservation policy for molasses in the state. The cane crushing season is still on. So far, mills in the state have produced about 8.6 million tonnes of sugar. (Source: Business Standard)