Bhubaneswar Aug 9 :More than two decades after the Odisha government created a separate development council for 10 western districts infamous for their backwardness and poverty, it is now planning to create a new department for western Odisha to effectively deal with the development issues in a holistic and time-bound way, people aware of the developments, said.
They claim that a proposal may be brought before the state cabinet soon much before the process of gram panchayat polls gets underway early next year. The idea, if it finally makes it through the Cabinet, would make Odisha only the second state after Assam- which approved one for Bodoland in May this year– with a separate department for a region. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had first created a separate department for the north east region in 2001 and then followed it up with a ministry in 2004, but no state had done it till Assam took the decision about two months ago.
Some leaders from the ruling Biju Janata Dal requesting anonymity said that the proposal was at an advanced stage, but refused to give a timeline. ‘Chief minister Naveen Patnaik has kept western Odisha in focus. Over the last couple of years, he has pumped in huge amounts of money for irrigation schemes for several districts of western Odisha including Kalahandi, Sambalpur and Bargarh. The government is also announcing more money for building smart classrooms in government high schools there. More projects would be announced once the Covid pandemic weakens a bit,’ said Sushant Singh, the minister for rural development, adding that a special assistance of ₹50 crores given for management of Covid-19 in 11 districts of western Odisha was proof of the government’s seriousness for the region.
In 2000, the Naveen Patnaik government created the Western Odisha Development Council comprising 10 districts of Bargarh, Balangir, Boudh, Deogarh, Jharsuguda, Kalahandi, Nuapada, Sambalpur, Subarnapur, Sundargarh and Athamallick Sub-division of Angul district with an annual Budget of ₹100 crore for community based projects as per people’s needs. The region, known for labour migration to other states and wrecked by natural disasters like droughts, has been a huge drag on the state’s development with a poverty rate higher than state’s 32% . Districts like Kalahandi often made headlines for child trafficking.
Officials in the know said a separate department would help in convergence of several government schemes as the development council had failed to deliver the desired results. At present, development work related to the region is taken up separately by different departments causing delays.
Since inception, the WODC was sanctioned ₹1,615.93 crore for taking up different projects under road and communication, agricultural development, irrigation, water supply schemes, infrastructure development in school and colleges, health services, and electrification of villages. This year, the government increased its annual budget to ₹200 crore. But an audit of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CA) last year found plenty of irregularities and infirmities in the council’s accounts and decision making. As per the audit report, 34 of the 89 blocks in the region were still ‘very backward’, while 25 were backward and adequate priority had not been given to bring them at par with developed blocks. The audit found that frequent changes in the projects by the MLAs led to low spending, which was also a result of lack of coordination between the executing agencies. The CAG was also critical of the Western Odisha Development Council’s (WODC) decision to provide financial assistance to certain private educational institutions in disregard of the statutory instructions.
Political analysts said the government’s move to have a separate department for western Odisha may be rooted in the BJD’s grand plan to strike at the votebase of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in western Odisha. In 2017 panchayatiraj polls, BJP won 9 of the zilla parishads, most of them in western and tribal Odisha. In 2019 Lok Sabha polls, BJD lost out to the BJP in almost the entire western Odisha belt, which helped the ruling party at the Centre win 8 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats and secure 38.37 % of the votes, a rise of 16.49 % from its 2014 figures.
‘Since the last couple of years, BJD has been trying its best to cut into BJP’s votebase in Kalahandi, Sambalpur and Sundargarh. The only way the party can do this is through better implementation of basic welfare measures. Since the beginning, the WODC had its headquarter in Bhubaneswar and that affected the development process. Creation of a separate department is BJD’s way of telling western Odisha electorate that it cares for them,’ said Satya Prakash Dash, a political science professor.
BJP state vice-president and MLA of Kuchinda in Sambalpur district, Nauri Nayak said creation of a separate department is yet another ‘gimmick’ by the state government to woo the people of western Odisha.
‘Since several years, WODC has functioned only with a chairman and a CEO, when it was supposed to have 22 members including 11 MLAs, 2 members of parliament and experts. In the past 20 years, the WODC has served as a political rehabilitation center for the ruling party politicians or retired bureaucrats. All these years, the government could not even shift the council’s headquarter in any western Odisha town, and now, they are talking of a separate department. We demand that the headquarters of the WODC be shifted to Sambalpur for better implementation of projects,’ said Nayak.