In the wake of farmers' protests, India's Maharashtra state legislative assembly on Tuesday witnessed a face-off between the ruling Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition and opposition parties over dwindling onion prices.
The state legislature was eventually adjourned until Wednesday amid the ruckus by three opposition parties in Maharashtra - Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and Uddhav Thackeray's Sena.
The uproar by opposition lawmakers came after Deputy State Chief Devendra Fadnavis, the top BJP politician in the state, said that the state authorities were ready to provide monetary compensation to onion farmers.
Fadnavis asserted that the state government was doing everything possible, including acquiring quintals of onions from producers to offer relief to them.
However, Fadnavis' remarks didn't have any effect on NCP legislators in highlighting the gravity of the problem, so they wore onion garlands and protested at the main gate of the state assembly.
The opposition's protests in the state legislature came 24 hours after farmers decided against auctioning their onion produce in Nashik, Asia's largest wholesale market.
While farmers called off their protests after the state government intervened, they are demanding 1,500 INR for a quintal of onions from the authorities.
Earlier this week, the average price of a quintal of onions was 400 INR in the auction, something the farmers said was not even enough to recover their cost of production.