Pranab Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, July 2: Political temperature in the state has shot up following chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s allegation that UPA’s presidential candidate Pranab Mukherjee had doled out large sums of money to states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Bengal in his capacity as finance minister to elicit support for his candidature.

Stunned by the charge which comes ahead of Mukherjee’s proposed visit to the state on July 11, Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Niranjan Patnaik said the chief minister should know that allocation of central funds to states was approved by the Union cabinet.

“Such decisions are not taken by an individual minister. It is wrong to see any politics in this,” he said while hitting out at the Odisha government for failing to make full use of central allocations.

“The Centre has released crores of rupees to Odisha for the implementation of special projects. But, Odisha has failed to utilise the money. Recently, Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said he was ready to release Rs 2,000 crore for projects under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the state but Naveen Patnaik government seems disinterested,” said Patnaik.

Naveen has upset the Odisha Congress leaders when he accused Mukherjee of trying to buy the support of parties such as Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal (United) and Trinamul Congress by granting largesse to selective states during his tenure as finance minister.

“This is people’s money, your money. Why is so much money being given by the central government when the presidential elections are going on?” the chief minister, who was the first to propose the name of former Lok Sabha Speaker P.A. Sangma for the country’s top post against Mukherjee, sought to know.

On the other hand, CPI national secretary D. Raja today said here that the presidential poll would lead to realignment of political forces in the country. On why his party did not go along with the CPI(M), Raja said: “We agreed to disagree.”