By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, May 3, 2016 : The ruling Biju Janata Dal [BJD] legislators on Tuesday took out a rally from the Assembly premises to the Raj Bhawan to lodge a complaint about forcible allocation of wheat in lieu of rice against allocations under the National Food Security Act [NFSA] to Odisha with Governor S C Jamir .

A delegation of the MLAs met Governor’s representative in his absence and handed him over a memorandum addressed to the President of India on the matter.

The party has demanded that Odisha being primarily rice producing and consuming state it should be allocated more rice instead of wheat.

“Our state is primarily rice consuming state. Our state produces more rice. People belonging to tribal and scheduled caste communities have no requirement of wheat. Being very well aware of it, the Central government is supplying wheat instead of rice to Odisha. Currently, the state government is incurring huge expenditure to purchase rice for supplying to the beneficiaries. The Chief Minister has apprised the Centre many times on this account,” former minister Suryanarayan Patra said.

BJD spokesperson Samir Dash made it clear that the central government has been forcing Odisha to take more wheat than rice. “While our requirement for rice is more than that of wheat, the Central government is forcing us to take wheat. The chief secretary has several times written to the Central government in this context. Demand for rice is more in Odisha. Almost one-fourth of state’s tribal and schedule caste populace do not depend on wheat as their staple food. Protesting against that we have submitted a memorandum to the Governor”.

The MLAs had earlier in the day discussed the matter at room no. 54 of the state Assembly. The meeting was attended by MLAs and Ministers of the BJD.

The opposition Congress, on the other hand, has said that since the government is not prepared to discuss chit fund issue in the Assembly it has raised the issue of rice and wheat as a ploy to divert public attention.

“The government is not willing to debate the chit fund issue since it will reveal their links with the Ponzi firms. People from the ruling party have taken huge sums from Ponzi firms. In order to divert public attention they have raised the wheat and rice issue as a ploy,” said Tara Prasad Bahinpati, Opposition chief whip in the state Assembly.