In order to ease the burden on customers, the State Government on Tuesday has started selling onions at Rs 46 per kg from fair price shops.
As many as 100 special outlets were opened in different wards of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), where one can get a kg of onion at a time for Rs 46. Besides Bhubaneswar, special onion outlets were opened at Cuttack, Rourkela, Sambalpur, Jeypore, Baleswar, Brahmapur and some other places of the State.
Onion prices went up from Rs 26 a kg in the last week of June to Rs 60 a kg at present in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. Food and Civil Supply Minister Pratap Keshari Deb demanded immediate measures by the Union Government to control the price hike. “Opening of special outlets and distribution of onion at subsidised rates is not at all a permanent solution. The State Government’s role in controlling the price is negligible, while the Union Government has to step in with prompt measures to control the spiraling prices of onion,” maintained Deb. City -based Kuberpuri Merchants’ Association secretary Sakti Sankar Mishra alleged that the Central Government’s onion export policy was responsible for the unsteady price rise of onion.