While orders are issued at the highest level of the State administration, nobody bothers at the field level to implement the same. Corruption and callousness is depriving people, especially farmers, of getting their entitlements.
Notwithstanding Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s order to the Department of Revenue & Disaster Management to give Agricultural Input Subsidy (AIS) to the farmers affected by drought, officials in the field are creating havoc by just not providing them the much needed support.
Taking up the issue of the farmers, senior Congress leader and former Kantabanji MlA Santosh Singh Saluja led hundreds of farmers in Muribahal block in a rally before the local tehsil office. Over two thousand famers demonstrated and demanded input subsidy on their lost crops damaged due to drought last year.
Saluja blamed the revenue authorities for their callousness and charged them of adopting corrupt means to release input subsidy. Needy farmers are not receiving the subsidy due to corrupt practices of the officials in the tehsil office, alleged he.
He said farmers in Balangir district are in dire straits as they are left in penury due to the severe drought. While all the blocks are drought-affected, the revenue authorities are supporting a few and ignoring the majority of the farmers, who are really affected.
The Chief Minister had issued the direction on February 10 while reviewing the progress made in the distribution of AIS among the needy farmers. However, the farmers, particularly small and marginal ones, complain that they are denied the subsidy.
A farmer, Jaswat Putel, alleged that for last six months they are running to the tehsil office, but in vain as the authorities are not listening to them.