The Central government on Wednesday raised the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for paddy by 5.35% to Rs 2,300 per quintal for 2024-25 Kharif marketing season. However, the situation has triggered a political slugfest across Odisha.
Opposition 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.
“The Prime Minister 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 has come to power for the last 15 days only. The saffron party further said that 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 and the BJP government has come to power only for 15 days. As per the promise, MSP of paddy will be increased up to Rs 3,100 per quintal soon. BJP government is the government of the people and the promise will be definitely kept,” assured BJP MLA Tankadhar Tripathy.