local MP RK Jena on Tuesday raised the crop and property damage issue in the Parliament in several blocks of the district, including Sadar, Remuna, Basta, Baliapal and Bhograi due to recent hailstorm, whirlwind and heavy rains.

Expressing serious concern over the loss and human suffering due to nature’s fury that took place on March 19, he demanded an ex-gratia amount of Rs2 lakh for each farmer who had faced crop loss on account of the reason besides demanding rebuilding of the houses by the Central Government.

He also asserted that in Baliapal Block, around nine villages faced the wrath of the nature which had caused massive damage to nearly 70 houses. Jena mentioned that the rains and hailstorm caused heavy damage to property and massive inconvenience to common man, especially farmers.

Preliminary reports indicated that about 23 per cent of agricultural crop was damaged in at least six of blocks in Baleswar. The loss on agriculture front was suffered by at least farmers in 800 villages of the district, he said.

Reiterating his earlier demand regarding lightning prediction technology in India, he sought to know the progress made by the Science and Technology Ministry. Further, Jena, mentioning need of such technology, also urged the ministry to focus on developing cutting edge technology to predict lightning and hailstorms.

It may be noted here that last year on August 3 in Parliament, he had raised the issue of early forecast technology for lightening stating the deaths due to lightening in Odisha per annum was more than 300.

Jena, then, had suggested to the Government to develop technologies in predicting lightning strikes and pointed at a few examples from the US and UK where lightning predicting technologies were being used.