The bumper potato harvest this year is ironically turning out to be bad news for farmers in Uttar Pradesh. With storage houses already full to capacity, the market is flooded with the produce, causing a steep fall in prices. Farmers in Kanpur, Etawah, Farukkhabad and others districts have been forced to hunt for storage houses in other districts.

On Wednesday night, over a dozen people including two policemen were injured and several vehicles damaged during a protest by villagers angry over non-availability of space in a cold storage.

The district administration, which insists the cold storage has the capacity to accomodate around 32,000 quintals, had come to the storage on Wednesday night to check the records, led by Sub-Divisional Magistrate Anand Shukla. Police say the supporters of BJP district president Shiv Pratap Singh, who owns the storage, attacked them, forcing them to lathicharge.

Singh, however, says the policemen were attacked by local farmers demonstrating against non-availability of space.

There are reports of protests by farmers in Kanpur and Farukkhabad districts as well. Ashok Kumar, a Kanpur-based farmer, said that all the cold storage houses in the area were full and that the potatoes were bound to rot if left in the open for long. He claimed that farmers were being forced to sell at as low as Rs 200 per quintal.

A farmer leader of Etawah, Mukut Yadav, said that he would meet cold storage owners and administrative officials and request them to support farmers in all possible manner.

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