By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, March 24, 2015 :

The ruling Biju Janata Dal [BJD] and opposition members on Monday embarrassed the government for the distress sale of potatoes by local farmers. Just a few months back the state had potato per kg soled at Rs 50.

The state imports over 8.7 lakh ton of potato against the demand of 11.2 lakh ton per annum. The government recently launched the ‘Potato Mission’ to reduce the state’s dependency on other states for meeting its potato requirement.

Earlier in the day, BJD MLA Ranendra Pratap Swain raised questions over the ‘Potato Mission’ recently launched by the state government.

Congress Chief Whip Tara Prasad Bahinipati was quick to join in the attack and shouted slogans forcing the house to be adjourned twice.

The members accused that against the procurement target of 39000 metric ton of potato only a miserable 200 metric ton has been procured by state agencies.

Interestingly, the politics over potato took an interesting twist with two ministers accusing each other for the sorry state of potato procurement. Co-operation minister Damodar Rout and agriculture minister Pradeep Maharathy locked horns outside the Assembly over potato procurement. While Maharathy accused Rout’s department of negligence, Rout blamed it on lack of co-ordination by the agriculture department.

“MARKFED is supposed to procure potatoes from 22 districts and NAFED from seven others. However, both these departments belong to co-operation department. My job was to get potato production boosted. I did it. Who is to buy, where to store, where to sell is none of my business,” said Maharathy.

Rout countered : “NAFED has been tasked to procure potatoes from seven districts. However, I am not aware of it. While there is co-ordination at officers’ level, it is missing at the ministerial level. Did the Agriculture Minister ever inform me about boosting potato production and ask me to get the marketing done? Let him answer this first”.

Speaker Niranjan Pujari later convened a meeting to deliberate upon this important issue which was
attended by co-operation minister, food and supplies minister, agriculture minister, leader of opposition and leader of BJP legislators in the House.