Bhubaneswar: Close on the heels of the political fight over crop loss between Opposition parties, two senior BJD leaders and state ministers engaged themselves in a verbal duel on the issue Thursday.
The fight surfaced when Food Supplies and Cooperation Minister Surya Narayan Patro blamed the agriculture department alleging that its officials are not carrying out field visits to assess crop losses due to pest attacks and unseasonal rains despite Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s order for submission of the crop loss report by November 25.
“The non-visit of field officials of Agriculture department is leading to the delay in submission of the damage report,” Patro said, adding, “I got complaints about this from locals Wednesday while reviewing the matter in Ganjam.”
Patro said that he also reprimanded some of the officials of the agriculture department for not visiting the fields and has also written a letter to the agriculture department to take required measures.
“Since the Chief Minister has instructed to assess the damage and report it before November 25, while talking to the senior officials I have asked them to ensure visiting of their staff to the field to ensure proper assessment of the loss and timely submission of the report to the state government,” said Patro.
Unable to digest the allegations of Patro, Agriculture Minister Damodar Rout immediately hit back and took a jibe at the Food and Cooperation Minister.
“Being the former Revenue Minister, he (Patro) should know that assessment of crop loss is done by the officials of Revenue department like RI and Tehsildar in the presence of Agriculture department officials,” Rout sharply reacted.
Rout further said that he has already issued instructions to field level officials of his department to assist the revenue officials in this work.
Notably, after crop loss due to pest attacks in 1.28lakh hectares in the state, unusual rains due to low pressure and depression in Bay of Bengal led to damage of crops in many districts of the state. That saw the Chief Minister instructing top officials of Agriculture and Revenue departments to assess the crop loss in the affected areas and submit the report to government by November 25 after which the state government will take required relief measures.
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