Bhubaneswar: Amidst resentment among farmers over alleged scarcity of fertilisers in the State, BJD chief Naveen Patnaik on Saturday sought the Centre’s intervention in the matter and demanded adequate supply of urea during the current kharif season. Patnaik’s appeal came following reports of farmers hitting the streets to press their demand for adequate supply of fertilisers in southern Odisha districts of Malkangiri, Ganjam and Nabarangpur.

Their protest in Malkangiri led to the disruption of traffic movement on the National Highway-326 on Friday. However, Odisha’s Food Supplies Minister Krushna Chandra Patra ridiculed Patnaik for writing a letter to the Centre and demanding more fertilisers for the State. “There is no scarcity of fertilisers in the State,” Patra said.

The minister also recalled how Patnaik had written a letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee last year when there was irregularity in potato supply from the eastern State. “Everybody knows what happened to his letter to West Bengal Chief Minister. Now, there is no need to write a letter to the Centre for fertilisers,” he told reporters. Patra further claimed that farmers are satisfied with the BJP government, which hiked the minimum support price (MSP) for paddy to Rs 3,100 per quintal. “Farmers who stopped cultivation during BJD government, now see a future in farming under the Mohan Charan Majhi government,” he claimed.

Earlier in the day, Patnaik, in a letter to Union Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister J P Nadda, requested him to “take necessary steps for adequate supply of urea to Odisha during this kharif season in the larger interest of the farming community”. Noting that agriculture is the “mainstay of Odisha’s economy, which provides livelihood to more than 70 per cent of its population”, the BJD chief said the State’s growth in the agricultural sector has been spectacular over the past two decades. “From a mere importer of rice, Odisha has transformed itself into a major contributor to the country’s public distribution system,” he mentioned in the letter.

Hundreds of farmers in Malkangiri gathered at Mathili Large Area Multipurpose Cooperative Society for fertilisers and the massive turnout caused traffic disruptions on the National Highway-326 on Friday, police said. While only 1,200 bags of fertilisers were available at the LAMPS centre, the number of farmers was around 10 times, local officials said.

Deputy Chief Minister K V Singh Deo, who is in charge of the Agriculture and Farmer Empowerment department, said stringent action would be taken against dealers found indulging in black marketing of fertilisers.

Senior BJD leader and former agriculture minister Arun Kumar Sahoo, however, warned the State’s BJP government that his party would launch a statewide agitation if the fertiliser scarcity is not met immediately.