Bhubaneswar: Odisha will take part in the fourth meeting of the Niti Aayog's governing body to be held on June 16 and is likely to take up issues such as Mahanadi water dispute and special category status for the state.

Finance minister Sashi Bhusan Behera said: "The state is going to take up many issues, including the Mahanadi dispute. The Centre has been silent on the illegal constructions undertaken by Chhattisgarh in the river upstream."

Behera said: "The other major issue is the demand for special category state status."

Sources said the state would demand greater flexibility to design and implement programmes suited to its specific needs within the broad development objective set at the national level.

It will also raise the issue of restoration of central assistance for special plan for the KBK, integrated action plan and backward region grant fund districts. It will seek special attention to the issue of financial inclusion in the bank-less gram panchayats, mobile connectivity at villages and broadband in all gram panchayats, especially in the Maoist-hit areas.

Officials said the state could also take up the issue of green tax.

"Our state is paying a heavy price in terms of pollution caused by the coal mines and during extraction of other minerals. Odisha should be adequately compensated by way of a green tax against pollution caused by mining," said an official.

Similarly, it will take up the issue of negligence of railways towards the cause of Odisha. "Odisha is one of the largest contributors to the earnings of Indian Railways, but unfortunately the route length and rail density in the state are well below the national average. We will demand acceleration of construction of rail tracks for which the state government is providing 50 per cent funds and land free of cost," an official said. Besides, the state will take up the industrial corridor issue.

"The industrial corridor has been announced to connect Chennai-Vishakhapatnam and Amritsar and Calcutta. Both these corridors have bypassed us, despite Odisha being a major mineral bearing and port state," he said.

The state would take up the issue of arbitrary cuts in various existing central schemes resulting in incomplete projects, delays and cost overruns. Similarly, it would also point out how non-availability of funds for irrigation, rural roads and railway projects have hit projects. Bringing petroleum products under the ambit of GST is also an important issue that the state would take up.

Odisha had a clash with Niti Aayog and it boycotted the Centre's aspirational districts programme and refused to send its collectors to the meeting called by Aayog. Later, the Niti Aayog chief called on the chief minister and said that Odisha's interests would be looked into.