The State Government has decided to post IAS officer K Sudarshan Chakravarthy as Additional District Magistrate (ADM) in place of OAS officer RN Mishra here.
Years back considering the importance of Rourkela, the Government was posting IAS officers as ADM, under whose guidance many remarkable development works were done. But in last many years pretending the shortage of IAS officers, the Government was posting OAS officers as ADM. Even when an IAS officer was posted, it used to be for a briefspell.
In one part, the Government was posting an OAS officer as ADM and additionally was assigned him with the charge of Secretary, RDA and Administrator, Rourkela Urban Bank. This used to overburden an ADM as a result of which he failed to concentrate on any one of his duty fully.
Even the most required construction work of the second Brahmani Bridge and widening of NH-143 could not start. The contract for the project was given for `778 crores to a contractor by the NHAI on May 31, 2012.
As per the procedure, the company would have started construction work of the road and the bridge after getting about 80 per cent of the total land required for the purpose.
The ADM, Rourkela who is also land acquisition officer of the project was supposed to hand over the land by December 2013. But he failed and the contractor quit the project in the end. Now the NHAI has to go for a re-tender after re-estimating the project cost at the current price.
Another chronic problem of the city is displaced people’s movement.
After 57 years of the establishment of the Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP), the land oustees are agitating for job under rehabilitation and so far, the local administration has failed to sort it out.
Besides, many important projects are not taken up despite fund allocations due to lapses in eviction drive of unauthorized encroachers. That is why a common perception here is that if an IAS officer as ADM is appointed, he can take forward many projects and development works.
As very soon Rourkela Municipality would be upgraded to a corporation and many paper works are to be done prior to that, the common demand here is for posting of an IAS or a senior OAS officer as Executive Officer.