Though the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) authorities have been continuously writing to the Punjab Government and the PSEB authorities to exempt the ginning and pressing mills from the power cuts for the past two months, the authorities are yet to take necessary steps in that connection.

“Due to power cuts, the functioning of ginning and pressing mills have been affected as these are running at 50 per cent of their installed capacity. Due the reduction in their capacity, the ginning and pressing mills are facing problems on account of storing the raw cotton and hence their owners have slowed down their purchases from the markets,” pointed out a mill owner.

About 145 mills could process only about 8.5 lakh cotton bales so far despite the fact that more than 12 lakh bales had arrived in the markets, he said.

A survey carried out in different cotton markets by TNS revealed that due to low demand from private traders and ginning and oppressing mills owners, growers had been left with no other option than to dispose of their cotton at minimum support price to the CCI or even below that price of that.

Though the demand of raw cotton in the markets have touched its bottom, its arrival has been witnessing a significant jump for the past one week. About a week ago the daily arrival of raw cotton was about 16,000 bales in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan and now it has reached upto 25,000 bales daily. The Chairman of the CCI had taken up the matter of power cuts with the Chairman, PSEB.

Information revealed that though every time, the CCI authorities were assured that power position would be improved, at least in the cotton belt of Punjab where cotton mills were located, nothing positive had taken place so far in that direction.