Political slugfest begins over paddy MSP in Odisha, BJD accuses BJP backtracking on its poll promises
BHUBANESWAR: The Union government on Wednesday hiked the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for paddy by 5.35 per cent to Rs 2,300 per quintal for 2024-25 Kharif marketing season. However, this decision of the Centre has triggered a political slugfest across Odisha.
Opposition Biju Janata Dal (BJD) alleged that the ruling BJP has failed to keep its promise of increasing the MSP of paddy to Rs 3,100 per quintal.
As per BJD, farmers are not happy over the MSP increase of Rs 117 per one quintal of paddy.
Along with the BJD, Congress has also demanded that the MSP of paddy should be increased as per the recommendation of the Swaminathan Committee report.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised that the MSP of rice will be hiked. However, it was only increased to Rs 117. Do you think that the farmers of India and Odisha are happy over it? We have always demanded to fix the MSP of paddy as per the recommendation of Swaminathan committee report. The Union government has so far failed to implement it. Farmers are incurring loss as the expenditure in paddy farming has increased,” said Deputy Leader of Opposition Prasanna Acharya.
“As per the announcement of BJP in its election manifesto, we were expecting that the MSP of paddy will be hiked up to Rs 3,100 per quintal. Now, they have a double engine government and it’s their responsibility to keep their promise. We were waiting for when they will hike the MSP of paddy to Rs 3,100 per quintal,” said Congress leader C S Raazen Ekka.
In response to the demands by the Opposition parties, the ruling BJP said that their party came to power in the state only 15 days ago and it will take some time to calculate the arithmetic to pay the promised MSP to the farmers.
“The paddy farmers will definitely get Rs 3,100 per quintal soon as per the promise of the Chief Minister. Those who were in power earlier have done nothing for the farmers. The BJP government is the government of the people and the promise will be definitely honoured by it,” assured BJP MLA Tankadhar Tripathy.
