Bhubaneswar, Dec. 11: Members of the Congress and the BJP today decided not to be part of the House Committee of the Assembly that was supposed to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue of Polavaram.
The immediate provocation for the Congress and the BJP was the BJD's attempt to "hijack the issue". In the Assembly, the ruling party members rushed to the well of the House and blocked the proceedings as soon as it met in the morning.
Later, a BJD delegation, including a few ministers, marched in a procession from the Assembly to the Raj Bhavan to submit a memorandum to governor S.C. Jamir demanding scraping of the Polavaram project.
Leaders of the Congress and the BJP pointed out that the action of the BJD, without consulting them, amounted to breach of trust. Only on Thursday evening, it was agreed that a House committee comprising representatives from all parties should call on the Prime Minister and request him to cancel the project, which affected the interests of the state.
"This is petty politics. The chief minister has betrayed the Opposition. He has neither taken the House into confidence nor the Opposition parties," said Congress chief whip Tara Prasad Bahinipati.
He said that all the five Congress members, including himself, who were part of the 25-member House committee, had resigned. The other four Congress members are Bhujabal Majhi, Kailash Kulesika, Krushna Chandra Sagaria and Chandrasekhar Majhi - all from the undivided Koraput district, which will be affected by Polavaram project.
BJP legislator Pradip Purohit, a member of the House committee, said: "The party's legislature party leader Basant Kumar Panda will not to accompany the delegation to Delhi. The BJD is enacting a play, we don't want to be part of it."
BJD spokesperson Amar Satpathy said an appointment had been sought with the Prime Minister. "But that does mean that our party will sit silent till then."
In its memorandum, the BJD urged the Centre to reformulate the project to avoid submergence of Odisha territory, withhold the forest and environment clearance and not to grant revised investment clearance to the project as the matter was sub-judice in Supreme Court. The memorandum addressed to President Pranab Mukherjee was handed over to Jamir.
State Congress president Prasad Harichandan said the ruling party's decision to hit the streets today was aimed at diverting the public attention from the Congress's state wide protests against irregularities in ration card distribution.
"An agreement was signed between Odisha and Andhra Pradesh in 1978 and a chief minister-level meeting was held in 1980 on the Polavaram multipurpose project, After 30 years, they have suddenly remembered about the project and have taken to the streets! It was just a political ploy," he said alleging that the Naveen Patnaik government has not presented the state's case sincerely before the technical committee of the Godavari Water Dispute Tribunal and Supreme Court.
