BHUBANESWAR: The Opposition is set to come out all guns blazing to corner the BJP government in the Assembly, the Budget session of which commences on Tuesday.
The focus will be farmers’ distress, with both the BJD and Congress deciding to raise the issue alongside what they termed the government’s failures on law and order, low budget utilisation and the unresolved Mahanadi river water dispute with Chhattisgarh.
Chairing the BJD legislature party meeting at Sankha Bhawan here, leader of Opposition and BJD president Naveen Patnaik called upon party MLAs to deploy “every parliamentary tool” from questions, adjournment motions, walkouts to demonstrations on the floor of the House to hold the government accountable. “If the voice of the farmer is not heard in the mandi, it will roar in the Assembly,” he said.
Naveen asserted that the BJD would not allow the government to hide behind rhetoric. “Our strategy must be clinical and relentless,” he said, alleging that while the double-engine government remained occupied with slogans and publicity, farmers were forced to spend freezing nights under the open sky in mandis, guarding their harvest from dew and theft.
Claiming that the BJD alone stood with farmers in all seasons, Naveen said the party had been staging protests across the state for the past month. “Reports from our district units indicate that the anger among farmers is reaching a boiling point,” he added.
He asked party legislators to look beyond procurement centres as the government had failed not only farmers but the state economy as a whole. Citing budget figures, he said overall expenditure till December stood at around 47 per cent. “In some departments, spending is as low as 15 per cent even after 10 months of the financial year,” he said.
Describing the law and order situation as collapsed, Naveen said citizens, particularly women and children, were unsafe even during the day. On the long-pending Mahanadi dispute, he alleged that the state government had shown little interest to resolve it. The BJD should fight for the cause of farmers, women, students and Odia Asmita aggressively during the Budget session, he said.
The Congress legislature party also met to chalk out its strategy. CLP leader Ramachandra Kadam said issues relating to farmers’ distress, law and order and other governance failures would be raised in the House. Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Bhakta Charan Das, who attended the meeting, said the Congress, as a responsible Opposition, would continue to voice public concerns and ensure effective accountability of the government.