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Congress moves privilege motion against Revenue Minister

BHUBANESWAR: Congress moved a privilege motion against Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Surya Narayan Patro in the State Assembly on Saturday alleging that the Minister had provided wrong information to the House with regard to the financial assistance from the Centre for the farmers whose crops had been affected by drought and unseasonal rain last year.

After Opposition Chief Whop Prasad Harichandan served the privilege notice, Speaker Pradip Kumar Amat said he would examine the same.

While replying to a debate on an adjournment motion on Thursday, Mr. Patro had said the Centre had not given any financial assistance to compensate the farmers who had been hit by the drought and unseasonal rain in Orissa.

The Minister, however, had corrected his statement on Friday saying that the office of the State's Special Relief Commissioner had received a fax message from the office of the State government's Resident Commissioner in New Delhi about the Centre's sanction order about release of funds for the farmers at 5.46 pm on Thursday.

Mr. Harichandan countered the Minister claiming that he had received a fax message regarding the Centre's sanction of funds at 2.10 pm on Thursday and Mr. Patro was wrong in saying that he received information about it only at 5.46 pm that day.

He said Mr. Patro had misled the House as the State government had received the sanction order from the Centre on February 26.

Raising the issue during the zero hour, Leader of the Opposition Bhupinder Singh sought a clarification from Mr. Patro as to why he misled the House about the Central assistance for the farmers affected by drought and unseasonal rain.

Talking to presspersons outside the House, Mr. Patro defended himself by saying that the State government was not aware about the Centre sanctioning Rs. 560 crore for payment of compensation to the farmers hit by drought and rain when he was replying to the adjournment motion on Thursday.

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