By Our Correspondent in Bhubaneswar, February 6, 2015 :
The budget session of Odisha Legislative Assembly [OLA] on Friday began on a stormy note with Congress and BJP members staging a walkout in protest during the Governor’s address.
Soon after governor S.C. Jamir started reading out his 28 page speech in the House, leader of the Opposition Narshingha Mishra stood up and began his speech in protest.
The BJP members walked out soon after Jamir read out his speech. Eight minutes later, the Congress members quit the House making it clear that clear that it would not be smooth sailing for the treasury bench.
The opposition appears determined to embarrass the government on a host of issues ranging from various scams to women harassment.
The leader of opposition attributed apathy of the governor in not addressing their repeated complaints on various issues pertaining to the conduct of the ruling party and his failure to mention critical issues affecting the people of the State in his address as the main reason for the walkout.
BJP Legislature Party leader Basant Panda questioned the rosy picture painted by the Governor contrary to the ground reality.
Interestingly, Jamir in his address did not talk much about the industrialization and investment pouring into the state, a subject which the Naveen Patnaik government has been highlighting as its major success.
“After having achieved unprecedented success in attracting investments into the state, my Government is now on a consolidation phase to ensure such investment are actually grounded and the huge downstream opportunities are available by our entrepreneurs”, Jamir said.
The address referred to the onlgoing projects like Aluminium Park at Anugul, the Plastic Park at Balasore and Bio-tech Park at Bhubaneswar. Beisdes, it mentioned of developing two rail corridors connecting Angul to mineral rich Duburi and Sukinda.
The Governor informed the House that the state government would soon bring out the State Entrepreneur Policy and has targeted to create one lakh jobs during the first year of implementation of the proposed policy.
Highlighting the government’s achievement in power sector, Jamir claimed creation of a reliable power transmission infrastructure and its scientific management that has led to a record system of availability of 98% of power.
“And to maintain that level of efficiency, my government has decided to execute 18 more Grid sub-stations and lay 1025 circuit kilometers of lines in the days ahead,” he added.
Referring to the significant strides on the economic front and poverty eradication, the Governor said the State has been able to achieve average economic growth of 6.84% in during the first two years of 12th Plan period as national average of 4.7% during the same period.
Similarly, the per capita income in the State during 2012-13 is recorded at Rs 25,415 and 24.6% reduction in poverty has been achieved, Jamir revealed.
Jamir gave a rosy picture of implementation of various welfare schemes saying, “..my government is monitoring the outcomes from the other schemes such MLALAD Scheme, the Special Development programme, the Special Problem Fund and the MPLAD Fund”.
The first phase of the budget session will be held till February 22 and the second phase from March 11 to April 4.
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