Less than 24 hours after the Centre announced a Rs 600 crore (Rs 6 billion) package for sugarcane growers of states that have their own state advised prices, the scheme has run into rough weather with other states also demanding their share in the largesse.

• Centre announces Rs 600 cr aid for sugarcane farmers

Maharashtra's political heavyweight and Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar has written to Food Minister Sharad Yadav, requesting that his state be extended the financial aid as well.

Official sources said that Karnataka and Tamil Nadu sugar mills have expressed reservations over the package contending that the Sugar Development Fund, from which the aid is proposed to be extended, is an all-India corpus whose benefit should not be restricted to a handful of states.

Pawar called for 'uniform justice to prevail' with regard to the sugarcane pricing tangle.

In his letter to Yadav, he echoed what Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had said, pointing out that the SDF is contributed by all the cane growing states, in which Maharashtra's cane growers' share is almost 35 per cent.

He said for the last one year, cane growing farmers in Maharashtra have been unable to receive even the statutory minimum price for their produce.

This was due to a steep drop in the sale prices of sugar.

As a result there have been a series of agitations causing at times law and order problems in major cane growing areas of Maharashtra.

Sugar mills in Maharashtra have predominantly contributed to the SDF kitty and are run and owned by the cane growers themselves, he added.