BHUBANESWAR: AS the stand-off between the treasury and opposition benches in the Assembly is nowhere close to being resolved, both the ruling BJD and BJP have taken up the paddy procurement issue to the Central government. A day after a delegation of BJD MPs met Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal, a BJP parliamentary delegation from the State on Tuesday sought the Minister’s intervention for procurement of unsold paddy from registered farmers before closure of the kharif marketing season on March 31, 2021.
The delegation of BJP lawmakers led by Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed Goyal that a large number of registered small and marginal farmers are forced to sell their paddy to private traders at half of the minimum support price (MSP) fixed by the Centre as the State government agencies have stopped procurement ahead of the scheduled date.
“The paddy procurement operations are in a shamble as the mandis (paddy purchase centres) operated by State government agencies are under the control of mandi mafias, middlemen and rice millers,” said the memorandum that they submitted to the Minister.The online token system proved to be a complete failure as the mandis are not purchasing paddy on the appointed dates from the farmers. Since tokens issued got lapsed after 30 days and there is no system for reissuing tokens, the poor farmers have no other option but to sell their stocks to the local traders who are mostly the agents of rice millers, the BJP MPs told Goyal.
“It has been reported that the system is manipulated to facilitate supporters of the ruling BJD to sell their produce at higher price at the cost of genuine registered farmers,” they said.With a bumper harvest of paddy due to a favourable monsoon, farmers of the State are suffering due to State government apathy, administrative inefficiencies and long-standing malpractice.The State government is not revising its ceiling of paddy procurement of 19 quintal for every acre of irrigated land and 13 quintal for every acre of non-irrigated land in spite of the bumper crop yield this season.
BJD hits out at BJP over farmers’ issue
Bhubaneswar: The BJD on Tuesday hit out at the BJP for politicising the genuine issues of farmers without pressurising the Centre for evacuation of rice and payment of pending subsidy to Odisha. “If the BJP MPs truly had the good of the farmers of Odisha in their heart, they would have demanded that the Centre immediately evacuate the rice that is lying in the State and also release the pending dues,” BJD national spokesperson and Rajya Sabha Member Sasmit Patra said. He added that it seems the BJP MPs from Odisha developed cold feet after forceful demand by the BJD MPs on Monday.