The Odisha Assembly witnessed noisy scenes on Monday with members of the Opposition Congress stalling the proceedings blaming the government for the hardships that farmers were facing to sell their paddy in several districts in the State.
Slogans raised
The Congress members rushed to the well as soon as the House assembled for the day and raised slogans demanding withdrawal of the system of centralised issuance of tokens to farmers to sell their produce.
They said that thousands of farmers were agitating since they had not been issued the tokens for the past four days due to mismanagement in the online issuance of tokens introduced by the government at the State level.
The farmers should be issued token at the district level, they demanded.
Speaker Surjya Narayan Patro adjourned the proceedings till 3 p.m. as normalcy could not be restored. The issue was again raised by the Congress members in the post-lunch session.
State Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Minister Ranendra Pratap Swain, however, said that the tokens were being issued scientifically and no farmer will face any discrimination.
On the other hand, the main Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party boycotted the proceedings for most parts of the day demanding a CBI probe into the death of a woman panchayat executive officer in Jajpur district and sat on dharna near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the Assembly premises.
Memo to Governor
The BJP members, who had boycotted the proceedings on Saturday over the same demand, later went to Raj Bhavan and submitted a memorandum to Governor Ganeshi Lal seeking his intervention in the matter.
