BHUBANESWAR: Politics over alleged mismanagement in paddy procurement is heating up with the BJD on Friday announcing to protest the anti-farmer policy of the Centre by staging dharna in front of all storage godowns of Food Corporation of India (FCI) in the State on July 20.
Announcing this counter move of the party at a press meet here, the president of Biju Mahila Janata Dal (BMJD) and the party’s Attabira MLA Snehangini Chhuria slammed the BJP for misleading the farmers by feeding them wrong information on paddy procurement.
“The saffron party is shedding crocodile tears to divert public attention from real issues. While the Centre is backtracking from implementing the Swaminathan Committee report that prescribes the Centre to pay 1.5 times of the production cost of paddy to the farmers which comes to around Rs 2,930 per quintal, the FCI is not reimbursing the food subsidy bill amounting to Rs 6,570 crore to the State,” Chhuria said.
The State government has been demanding FCI for the removal of custom milled rice stored in its godowns in the State to facilitate higher procurement of paddy. The Central agency has an excess stock of seven lakh tonnes of paddy in Odisha. As a mark of protest to the indifferent attitude of the Centre to Odisha, the BJD has decided to stage dharna before all FCI godowns on July 20, the former minister said.
Refuting the BJP accusations that the central token system is the primary reason for alleged mismanagement in paddy procurement, Chhuria said the objective of warding off middlemen from the decentralised procurement has been achieved after the introduction of the online token system. The proceeds from the sale of the paddy are being transferred directly to the accounts of the beneficiaries.