File picture of chief minister Naveen Patnaik visiting a cyclone-affected village in Ganjam in Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar, Dec. 31: Natural calamities, money deposit collection scam and rising crime against women kept Odisha in the news almost throughout 2013.

The year also saw a spurt in Maoist violence and sluggish industrial activity with a mega project getting scrapped and some others making negligible progress.

All this, however, failed to dent the popularity of chief minister Naveen Patnaik, who led BJD to an impressive victory in the urban polls of west Odisha. These elections were widely touted as the semi-final before the 2014 finals.

For the better part of the year, the Naveen government was under fire from the Opposition for allegedly being hand in glove with a slew of ponzi companies that looted poor investors.

Both the Congress and the BJP demanded a CBI probe into the scandal refusing to put their faith in the crime branch inquiry ordered by the government.

Naveen, however, rejected the demand asserting that the crime branch probe was good enough and action had been taken against the 159 fraud companies and 425 cases had been registered in connection with the scam with 640 people, including heads of some of these organisations, being arrested.

This, though, was not the only scandal to cast its shadow on the year during which aftershocks of the mining scam that erupted in 2009 continued to be felt. The government was forced to order a vigilance inquiry into the illegal mining of iron ore worth Rs 1,800 crore in the Uliburu area of Keonjhar district with the Opposition creating a lot of noise on the issue in June.

The chief minister was also under attack from the Opposition for recommending a coal block in the state in favour of a major corporate house. The issue gathered steam when the CBI conducted raids in the state in October in connection with coal block allotments and the office of the Prime Minister also got dragged into the scandal. Naveen, however, stuck to his guns asserting that there was nothing wrong with his recommendations and that the Centre had taken the final decision in all such matters.

As the government was grappling with these issues, Phailin hit the state on October 12 followed closely by devastating floods triggered by heavy rain. The twin calamities claimed about 45 lives, Ganjam being the worst-hit district.

While the Naveen government collected accolades for its efficient handling of the cyclone with over 10 lakh people evacuated from the disaster zone, it was flayed for failing to anticipate the floods that wreaked havoc in several districts.

The state government sought a financial assistance of Rs 4,242.41 crore from the Centre towards repair and restoration works. The Centre announced Rs 1,000 crore as interim assistance.

The state was also rocked by a string of cases related to attacks against women, some of them being raped and murdered in the most gruesome manner. In July, a minor girl from Kendrapara district was alleged gang raped and set on fire in the seaside village of Kharuinasi. She died in a Bhubaneswar hospital 12 days after the attack.

A wave of revulsion swept through the state in October when a school teacher at Tikri in Rayagada district was set on fire by unknown goons after she had lodged a complaint of sexual harassment against a school inspector. The school inspector was arrested and dismissed from service along with some others after the teacher, Itishree Pradhan, succumbed to injuries at a hospital in Vishakhapatnam.

Rising Left wing extremism continued to be a challenge for Naveen in 2013 despite government claims of having brought the situation under control.

Maoist violence, which erupted in a big way towards the middle of the year with four BSF jawans being killed in Koraput’s Sunki valley, escalated in December when the rebels targeted civilians in Malkangiri district killing at least five of them in December. Police, however, had a major success in its operation against the rebels when during an encounter in September it gunned down 13 of them in Malkangiri.

There were setbacks for the government on the industrial front with world’s largest steelmaker ArcelorMittal scrapping its planned $12-billion (Rs 50,000 crore) steel plant project in the state in July following inordinate delays and problems of land acquisition. Vendanta’s alumina refinery at Lanjigarh, too, continued to face a raw material crisis. The government, though, remains hopeful of 12-million-tonne Posco steel project taking off in Jagatsinghpur district with work on boundary wall construction at the site having begun.

However, neither the gloom on the industrial front nor the shame of rising violence against women could stem the tide of Naveen’s growing popularity reflected in the stupendous victory of his party in the municipal elections held in two phases in September and November. The BJD steamrolled the Opposition capturing more than two-thirds of the urban local bodies where the elections were held.

The BJD attributed the victory to the slew of welfare schemes unleashed by its government, but the Opposition slammed the chief minister for indulging in what it termed as shameless populism and blatant display of money power.

What matters, though, is that while end of the year saw the two major opposition parties— Congress and the BJP—down in the dumps, the BJD looked stronger than ever, much better prepared than its rivals for the big battle in 2014.