{"id":34192,"date":"2026-08-22T12:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T06:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/mallikarjun-kharge-targets-modi-govt-over-rising-sugar-prices-imports\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T12:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T06:59:09","slug":"mallikarjun-kharge-targets-modi-govt-over-rising-sugar-prices-imports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/mallikarjun-kharge-targets-modi-govt-over-rising-sugar-prices-imports\/","title":{"rendered":"Mallikarjun Kharge Targets Modi Govt Over Rising Sugar Prices & Imports"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday targeted the Centre over rising sugar prices and declining domestic stocks, questioning the government’s sugar and ethanol policies ahead of the festive season.<\/p>\n

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In a post on X, Kharge said the \u201cbitterness\u201d of the Modi government’s policies had disappeared into the \u201csweetness\u201d of sugar ahead of the festivals.<\/p>\n

Kharge raised three questions over the current sugar situation. He questioned why India’s sugar stocks have fallen to a nine-year low, despite the country being one of the world’s largest sugar producers and exporters.<\/p>\n

He also asked why the government had to permit duty-free imports of 10 lakh tonnes of sugar and why sugar prices had increased by around 40% in three months.<\/p>\n

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Kharge questions E20 ethanol policy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kharge also called for a review of the government’s policy of producing ethanol from sugarcane and grains for the E20 fuel programme.<\/p>\n

He questioned the rationale behind using sugarcane for ethanol production at a time when domestic sugar supplies are declining and India is importing sugar.<\/p>\n

Linking the issue to the government’s \u2018Atmanirbhar Bharat\u2019 push, Kharge asked why the ethanol policy was not being reconsidered to address the domestic sugar shortage.<\/p>\n

Centre rejects ethanol policy link<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, however, has rejected the claim that the rise in sugar prices is linked to the ethanol policy.<\/p>\n

According to the ministry, the retail price of sugar rose from \u20b948.18 per kg on July 20 to \u20b955.70 per kg on August 20.<\/p>\n

The government attributed the increase to several factors, including lower domestic sugar production, higher demand ahead of festivals, weather-related crop damage, pressure from international markets, and hoarding and speculation.<\/p>\n

The contrasting positions have brought the government’s sugar supply management and ethanol blending policy into focus ahead of the festive season.<\/p>\n

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Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday targeted the Centre over rising sugar prices and declining domestic stocks, questioning the government’s sugar and ethanol policies ahead of the festive season. In a post on X, Kharge said the \u201cbitterness\u201d of the Modi government’s policies had disappeared into the \u201csweetness\u201d of sugar ahead of the festivals. Kharge…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[20263,26356,25366,22604,26537,30213,30209,30490],"class_list":["post-34192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nation","tag-congress-party","tag-indian-economy","tag-inflation","tag-mallikarjun-kharge","tag-modi-government","tag-sugar-import","tag-sugar-prices","tag-sugar-stock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}