Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held an emergency meeting on the issue with senior cabinet colleagues.
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, Law minister M. Veerappa Moily, Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and Home minister P. Chidambaram attended the meeting at Parliament House.
Sources said: "The decision taken at the meeting will be placed before the cabinet today (Thursday)." The cabinet meeting will take place at 5 pm here.
Holding sugarcane stems and shouting slogans against the government, the farmers marched from Ramlila grounds to Jantar Mantar, a demonstration hotspot in the city, this morning as the Winter Session of Parliament began.
The protest is organised by Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal, Bharatiya Kisan Union of Mahendra Singh Tikait and Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan.
The Centre brought in an ordinance recently specifying a price of Rs 129.85 per quintal for sugarcane during the 2009-10 crushing season under the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) system, which the protestors and opposition parties say is less.
In case a state government fixes the state advisory price (SAP) higher than the FRP, it will have to pay the difference.
"We are protesting against the government's FRP ordinance. We are also asking the government to hike the prices of sugarcane and paddy. The price of sugarcane should be increased to somewhere between Rs 280-400," Tikait said.
Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh told the protestors that "the FRP is something right for industrial tycoons but not for farmers. It is forcing farmers to commit suicide."
He accused the UPA government of sleeping over the issue.
Agitating farmers burn documents and furniture
MUZAFFARNAGAR: Agitating farmers set afire documents and furnitures of a sugar mill office here, even as work remained suspended in the factories following ongoing protests over cane prices.
Farmers led by Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Manju Devi Tikait, on Wednesday gheraoed the office of a sugar mill at Sisoli here and set the documents and furniture on fire.
Receipt of payments made to farmers was burnt in Lohari. Meanwhile, 15 sugar mills which had reopened yesterday could not carry out any processing work as they were short of sugarcane due to ongoing agitation.
The sugar mills included those in the western part of the state, including Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Saharanpore, Bijnore and Bulandshar.
Meerut District Magistrate warned that the administration would take immediate action would be taken if there were any incidents of black marketing of sugarcane or sugar.
Canegrowers across Uttar Pradesh have been agitating against the announced State Advisory Price of Rs 160 to Rs 170 per quintal, with an effective hike of Rs 25 per quintal, terming it as insufficient.
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