By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, December 27, 2019: Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday dedicated to the nation, the LPG bottling plant at Balangir in Odisha via video conferencing from Raipur in Chhattisgarh.

His scheduled visit was cancelled due to inclement weather. Vice President, who waited for two hours at the Raipur airport to board the special chopper to Balangir, dedicated the plant and addressed to the gathering through video conferencing. In his absence, Odisha Governor Prof. Ganeshi Lal inaugurated the BPCL’s LPG bottling plant.

The bottling plant has been set up at an expenditure of Rs 103 crore with a capacity of manufacturing 42 lakh cylinders annually. The bottling plant will benefit residents of 14 western Odisha districts.

Among other dignitaries, the Union Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Balangir MP Sangeeta Singh Deo, State Higher Education Minister Arun Sahoo, and Balangir MLA Narasingha Mishra were present on the occasion.

The State will soon have seven LPG bottling plants with two more plants coming up at Bhubaneswar and Rayagada. While the current bottling capacity of the existing four plants is 2 crore 80 lakh cylinders per annum, the bottling capacity will increase to 4 crore 6 lakh cylinders annually once all seven plants start production.