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Ryots up in arms against State government

BHUBANESWAR: The untimely rain that damaged paddy crop in a majority of districts of the State has created a major challenge for Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik with the affected farmers taking to streets demanding adequate compensation for their losses.

Mr. Patnaik's government has found to have been caught on the wrong foot on the issue of crop loss primarily because it failed to gauge the extent of damage caused by the cyclonic rain initially.

Although Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik visited a few areas where paddy crop was damaged by the rain and announced a Rs. 900-crore compensation package for the affected farmers, the measures taken so far had not made the farmers happy.

The State government was also not able to come out with a white paper on the crop loss even though the opposition parties demanded for it during the winter session of the Assembly that ended on Wednesday.

Although the State government had not sent a memorandum to the Central government, the legislators of the ruling Biju Janata Dal alleged that the Centre was neglecting the farmers of the State.

Realising that the unrest was spreading among the paddy growers, the Chief Minister finally went and met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Thursday evening and submitted a memorandum seeking Central assistance to the tune of Rs. 2,616 crores to compensate the distressed farmers.

PM's assurance

The Prime Minister reportedly assured Mr. Patnaik that a Central team would soon visit the State to assess the crop loss.

Mr. Patnaik is scheduled to meet Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on Friday to take up the crop loss issue. However, sources at Mr. Patnaik did not have the detailed reports about the crop damage with him.

Meanwhile, the farmers' organisations have demanded that all the 30 districts of the districts be included in the compensation package.

As many as seven districts were not included in the compensation package announced earlier by the State government.

The farmers are now demanding that the government should purchase all types of paddies from the farmers at the minimum support price. Since whatever paddy that the farmers had been able to harvest after the rain was not expected to fulfill the norms of fair average quality norms fixed by the government, the farmers have demanded that the paddy procurement norms be relaxed to prevent farmer suicides in the coming days.

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