PCC president Niranjan Patnaik tore into the BJD for moving to Delhi for an agitation for paddy MSP hike on January 8. He said it was purely a farce.
Patnaik said that before the 2019 elections, this is another gimmick being played by the BJD to woo farmers.
In a Press release, Patnaik said before the 2014 election, the BJD took its party members to Delhi by a special train to demand special category status for Odisha, but the result was a big zero. Now they are repeating this before 2019 elections, which will yield no fruit, he said.
Patnaik noted that the MSP hike is done for the entire country, not for any single State. The Odisha Government should have garnered support from all the States on the issue like reservation for women and then should have demanded it from the Center. But they are going on their own to agitate and are spending Rs 52 lakh on train fare for this, lamented Patnaik.
This money could have been distributed amongst the debt ridden farmers, so that many precious lives could have been saved. This is not in the interest of the farmers, rather this is a picnic congregation of the BJD, alleged Patnaik.