Potato and salt prices skyrocket in Odisha
People of the state shedding tears due to high prices of onion, have a new problem at hand: potato has been selling at anywhere between Rs 40 and Rs 80 a kilo in many towns of Odisha for almost a week. And to make matters worse, the price of salt shot up to Rs 60 per kg.
People in various parts of Odisha started panic buying of salt yesterday following a rumour that it would disappear from the market, like potato.
Hit hard by the ongoing potato pinch for the last several days, people made a beeline to grocery shops to buy as much salt as they could, thus leading to mad scenes in the state capital Bhubaneswar as well as districts like Jajpur, Nayagarh and Khurda.
Potato has vanished from vegetable shops across the state due to the stoppage of supply from West Bengal. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee ordered the state police to seize thousands of trucks carrying potatoes to Odisha.
The West Bengal chief minister had said last week: “Till the situation is stable in my state, I will not send my state’s potatoes outside. If there is anything left over after my state’s needs are met, then I will certainly send the potatoes outside.”
West Bengal and Odisha are on the verge of going to war over potatoes. A foretaste came over the weekend when activists in Odisha blocked trucks from Andhra Pradesh headed for West Bengal with fish and eggs.
The state government today said even as it has arranged to procure potatoes from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to meet the scarcity of this vegetable, the short supply in markets will continue till Wednesday, when the trucks are expected to reach the state.
The state government is also taking steps to release potatoes stored in cold storages of Rayagada and Koraput district to mitigate the crisis.
West Bengal is the largest supplier of potatoes to Odisha, sending some 350 to 400 truckloads daily. Since the crisis, the chief secretaries of the two states have started talks and the trucks to Bengal have been let through. But potato trucks are still not crossing the border.
Traders said, though potato carrying trucks would reach the state in next 2-3 days, the rates , currently hovering around Rs 40 a kg in the market, would not come down substantially, until supplies from West Bengal are restored.
