Bhubaneswar: A day after the Centre and the state disbursed fresh instalment of assistance to farmers, Opposition BJP and Congress Saturday targeted the state government over non-inclusion of all eligible farmers under PM Kisan scheme.
State BJP framers’ wing president Pradip Purohit alleged that lakhs of small and marginal farmers of Odisha are being deprived of the advantages of PM Kisan scheme as the state government is not providing the beneficiaries’ list to the Centre.
“The Union government has enough money to provide assistance to all eligible farmers of Odisha under the scheme. However, the state government is not providing the list of eligible farmers to the Centre. As a result, the poor farmers are deprived of the annual assistance of Rs 6,000 from the Centre,” he said.
Even, the state government doesn’t know how many sharecroppers and landless farmers are in Odisha, Purohit added.
Congress leader Santosh Singh Saluja too urged the state government to provide the list of all left out farmers to the Centre for their inclusion under the PM Kisan scheme.
The state government had earlier claimed that a total of 51 lakh beneficiaries have been covered under the Kalia scheme and now the number has come down to 42 lakh, Saluja claimed.
“The state government should provide the list of all eligible farmers to the Centre. And at the same time, the Centre should also include all kinds of farmers including sharecroppers and landless agricultural labourers under its scheme. The issue is related to farmers’ interest. So, it should not be politicised,” said the Congress leader.
In his reaction, BJD legislator Amar Satpathy said, “In a mark of respect to the farmers, we have been organising ‘Krushak Diwas’ since 2000. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has sanctioned an assistance of Rs 920 crore to 42 lakh farmers. The farmers are happy with the disbursal of the assistance.”
Notably, the Centre and the state government Friday released financial assistance to the farmers under PM Kisan and Kalia schemes respectively.
