Bhubaneswar: The two senior ministers of the Naveen Patnaik government today engaged in a verbal fight over crop loss assessments with one minister alleging that officials were not making field visits to assess crop loss.

Co-operation minister Surya Naryan Patro said agriculture department officials were not conducting field visits to assess crop loss caused by the pest attack and incessant rain. Reacting to this, agriculture minister Damodar Rout asked him not to poke his nose in the affairs of other departments.

Patro said: "I came to know about this while attending a meeting at the DRDA office. People had raised the issue that the agriculture officials are not making field visits for assessing crop damage. I immediately asked the officials present at the meeting to tour the villages as November 25 is the last date to submit report of crop loss to the state government."

"The state government has already set the November 25 deadline. It is now their responsibility to submit the report on time," he said.

"I don't want to bring the government on a backfoot and malign the government on the issue. I will not say anything," Rout said in reply. "Earlier, Surya Patro was revenue minister. He is aware of the issue that the report on crop loss is assessed by the revenue department. The tehsildars and revenue department make field visit in association with the agriculture officials. The agriculture department never assesses and gives reports."

Rout, however, said: "Crop loss assessment on the field level is going on. Written direction has been issued to village level workers, assistant agriculture officer, district agriculture officer and deputy director of agriculture to make field visit with the revenue officials," he said.

He said: "We have instructed our officials to sincerely prepare the data and made it available to the tehsildars so that the respective district collectors can submit their reports on time."