Odisha capital gobbles up 70 ton mutton, 100 ton chicken on Raja!

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Jun 15:

With the weather just right and a holiday to boot, residents of the Odisha capital made a beeline for shops selling meat and gobbled up a whopping 70 tonnes of mutton and 100 tonnes of chicken on Pahili Raja, the first day of the three-day long Raja festivities on Sunday.

Most of the 230-250 counters in the city were open by early morning and long queues were seen in all the shops.

Buyers, who usually love to negotiate the price, didn’t seem to mind the extra premium on the meat price either. Instead, people were seen happily taking away whatever they got.

The sellers were equally happy to sell off meat that would usually find few takers on a regular day and that too on a premium.

While mutton used to sell for Rs 400-430 till Raja, the price shot up to Rs 450-480 yesterday. Similarly, chicken price was up from Rs 180-200 to Rs 200-220 and desi chicken price jumped from around Rs 320-350 Rs 350-380.

“We had a very good day yesterday. Raja, coupled with a Sunday and a marriage ‘tithi’, brought in extraordinary business. There are about 230-250 mutton counters in the city. If each sold about 3 quintals of meat, overall, we expect 700 quintals of mutton to have been sold. Similarly, more than 1000 quintals of chicken have been sold. At this rate, the meat shops of the city had a business of more than Rs 6 crores yesterday,” said secretary of the mutton shop owners’ association.

The fish and other seafood shop owners also had a field day yesterday with a large crowd taking away goods without bargain. However, the rates of these products remained unchanged.