Is Maharashtra’s powerful sugar lobby muting Congress’s attack on Govt’s E20 fuel policy?

While the national leadership of the Congress party, championed by figures like Rahul Gandhi, aggressively attacks the government's E20 ethanol-blending policy over vehicle damage and consumer costs, political observers speculate that this campaign faces a significant internal roadblock from its own powerful Maharashtra lobby. The state’s deeply entrenched political machinery is built on cooperative sugar mills and expansive sugarcane farms, many of which are owned or controlled by influential regional Congress politicians who have found a highly lucrative financial lifeline in the government’s ethanol mandates. Because converting sugarcane into ethanol has transitioned into a primary revenue driver for these regional heavyweights and their agrarian vote banks, an all-out national crusade against the policy risks alienating the very satraps who fund and fuel the party's regional election engines, forcing Congress into a delicate balancing act between high-decibel national rhetoric and local economic self-interest.

 

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