Opposition Congress on Friday accused the Naveen Patnaik Government of taking no effective initiative to address the problems of acute shortage of paddy seeds in the State.
Participating in a debate on the admissibility of an adjournment motion, Opposition Chief Whip Tara Prasad Bahinipati said the paddy sprouts had withered following less rainfall during the current monsoon.
“The farmers have no seeds and were disappointed as the Government had become a silent spectator to the problems and was taking no initiative to help them in supplying the seeds,” alleged Bahinipati.
The Government, he said, was only shedding crocodile tears and making no efforts to procure good quality seeds from outside the State for the farmers and urged the Speaker to direct the Government to ensure that the seeds reach the farmers within the next couple of days.
He also demanded that the Government provide seeds free of cost and interest free loans to farmers affected due to the scanty rainfall.
Congress lawmaker Subal Sahu said various agencies entrusted with the job of providing seeds to the farmers were selling the seeds in black market at a high price and demanded stern action against them. He also wanted to know what steps the Government had been taking to make the State self sufficient in production of seeds.
Rabi Narayan Nayak of BJP held the faulty Government policy responsible for the shortage of seeds and demanded the Government to reactivate the seed processing units and initiate steps to provide alternate seeds like ground nut, black gram, meeca and moong to the farmers at the earliest.
Replying to the debate, Agriculture Minister Pradip Maharathy said the allegations made by the Opposition are not true. He said so far 4,83,935 quintals of good quality certified seeds had already been provided to the farmers which is 16,317 quintals more than what was supplied to farmers during this period last year.
The Minister said both the Odisha State Agro Industries Corporation and the Odisha State Seeds Corporation are providing seeds to the farmers through their registered dealers.
Admitting that there was a shortage of seeds in the State as 1.3 lakh quintals of paddy were damaged during the harvesting last year and 2,000 quintals of paddy seed were destroyed during the cyclonic storm
Phailin, the Minister informed the House that the Government had collected 16,000 quintals of paddy seed from the National Seeds Corporation and was initiating steps to procure an additional 5,000 quintals from the Maharashtra Seed Corporation to tide over the shortage.
The Minister also informed the Assembly that a four-member committee was constituted to resolve the problems faced by the farmers and assured that from the next year the State would be self-sufficient in the production of paddy seeds.
Treasury Bench Members Kailash Ch Kulesika, Amar Prasad Satpathy, Purna Chandra Sethi, Sanjeev Sahu and Jeevan Pradip Das claimed that the Government had taken a series of steps to solve the problem of farmers and urged the Minister to activate the seed processing centres and make alternate programmes to make the State self sufficient in seed production.