Once known as a high-quality sugar-producing mill, the Baramba Sugar Mill at Sunapal in Cuttack district is all set to go under the hammer as the Union Bank has put up a notice on its boundary wall.
Given the latest development, it can be said that the scene has been set for the end of the biggest agriculture-based industry that used to be a source of livelihood for hundreds of people.
The distraught local residents have urged the government and the political leaders to come forward to save the mill.
“The quality of the sugar produced by this mill was considered as the number one quality in the nation. And we the people of Odisha were proud of the mill. But it is a matter of great concern that it is going to be auctioned,” said a local resident.
“Then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had laid the foundation stone of this mill in 1984. Thanks to the foresight of then Chief Minister Janaki Ballabh Patnaik and other Congress, an agriculture-based industry could be established,” he added.
“A mass movement can only save the mill. I would like to request our local MLA to save the mill by paying Rs 27 crore and run it,” he further added.
An elderly man who worked as a security guard was also upset over the development.
A security guard of the mill said, “I had been receiving salaries till the outbreak of Covid 19. After the pandemic, I received my outstanding salaries in two phases. Now I am not receiving my salary. Today officials of the Union Bank came and asked us to go out of the site.”