The State Government on Thursday proved the contention of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) and the Opposition wrong and defended the Infrastructure Development Corporation of Odisha (IDCO) on the issue of according no objection certificate (NOC) to 26 industrial houses to enable them avail loans amounting to Rs 52,423.54 crores by mortgaging land allotted to them to be used for industrial purpose alone.

The CAG in its recent report laid in the Assembly had pointed out that the State PSU IDCO in clear and blatant violation of the rules and regulation had issued the NOCs to the industrial houses to avail loan from the banks by mortgaging the land allotted to them. On the basis of the NOCs issued by the IDCO, as many as 12 industrial houses availed loan of Rs 52, 423.54 crore from various financial institutions by mortgaging 8489.828 acres of land allotted to them by the IDCO for setting up of industries.

The IDCO had conferred the mortgaged rights in the lease deeds executed with the 52 MoU based and 54 non MoU based industries handing over them possession of nearly 46,732.89 acres of land despite the fact that such power was not vested with the corporation by the State Government, the CAG audit report had pointed out.

However, defending IDCO’s action, Industries Minister Debi Prasad Mishra, while making a statement on the issue in the Assembly, said everything was done as per law and policy parameters to create industrial climate to ensure economic development of the State.

The Minister admitted that as many as 1,656 industrial houses had not utilized the land allotted to them for industry purposes for various  reasons and assured the House that the State Government would soon take befitting action to cancel the land for not using for industrial purposes.

He said that so cause notices had already been slapped on the 1,260 units including TATA for cancellation of the allotment of the land and so far, the Government had cancelled allotment of land in respect of 313 defaulting units.

On the other hand, the Opposition Congress and BJP members dubbed the issuance of NOC by IDCO as a scam. The IDCO has violated the law in issuing NOC which helped the industrial houses get loan even ten timeshigher than the official premium. This is nothing but unholy nexusbetween the Government and the private promoters, they said.

Besides, alleging that a number of companies had misutilised the landallotted to them by the IDCO, they said the Government did not actagainst them for vested interests. They demanded that the land whichwas misutilised or not used should be brought back to the Government fold.

On the CAG observation, they said that it was the duty of the CAG to findfault with the Government. But the report is treated final after thescrutiny of the Public Accounts Committee of the Assembly.