Bhubaneswar, June 19: Union minister and Congress veteran Srikant Jena has sought to target chief minister Naveen Patnaik at a time when he is struggling to put his house in order following an abortive coup attempt against him.
Launching an attack on Naveen, Jena, minister of state for statistics and programme implementation in the UPA government, today made a bid to take the sting out of the BJD’s campaign against the Centre’s alleged neglect of Odisha.
Jena sought to nail the state’s “lie” about the Centre being stingy in releasing funds, saying that nine central projects worth more than Rs 31,000 crore had been delayed in the state by 67.77 months on an average following delay in land acquisition, obtaining forest and environment clearance and law and order problems.
Jena said the state government could not afford to be non-cooperative with the Centre if it wanted Odisha to develop.
“Don’t close your eyes to them just because they happen to be the central projects,” said Jena, asking Naveen to be proactive about sorting out the problems hindering the state ventures. “We have been writing to the state government to help us expedite the ongoing central sector projects, but our requests appear to have fallen on deaf ears,” said Jena, adding that his ministry had suggested to the state to form a central sector project co-ordination committee, headed by the chief secretary, to closely monitor progress of the central projects. “Many other states have done this but not Odisha,” he said.
The minister’s statement assumes significance in view of state government’s sustained campaign against the Centre for the past two years on the issue of alleged neglect of Odisha. The issue took a distinct political colour when the BJD organised a series of “Save Odisha” rallies in 2010 starting from Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district where Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi had also held a public meet around the same time accusing the state government of neglecting the tribals.
Later, similar rallies were organised by the BJD at Malknagiri and Jagatsinghpur followed by padyataras (foot marches) against the Centre in different parts of the state. Ever since Naveen has maintained a relentless tirade against the Centre.
The minister said a total of 27 central sector infrastructure projects, which were taken up for Rs 54,277.41 crore, were being executed in the state. However, he alleged that the cost had gone up to Rs 57,448.40 crore because of delay for which the state government was solely responsible.
Citing an example, he said the Rs 30,000-crore Paradip oil refinery project had been delayed because of frequent law and order problems and the pending forest clearance apart from the state’s inability to provide land for storage at Jharsuguda.
Similarly, though the 1,065km Pardip-Raipur-Ranchi pipeline project, which was closely linked to the oil refinery, has been given forest clearance by the Chhattisgarh government, the clearance in Odisha is still pending.
He said the Haridaspur-Paradip railway line, which would connect the state’s mining belt with Paradip port, had been hanging fire since 1995. “Had there been a co-ordination committee these problems would have been sorted out,” said the minister, who also seems to be unhappy with state’s lack of co-operation in the implementation of the Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Vidyutkaran Yojana, which has been making indifferent progress in Odisha.
