Even as the Raghunath Murmu Medical College of Baripada got the Supreme Court’s nod for admission of the first batch of students this year, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s impromptu visit to get assured about the infrastructure needed to impart medical education is looked upon as rare gesture. This prompts the BJP to seek details on the fate of the medical college at Bhangabari, Bhawanipatna which is a late starter. The Chief Minister had laid the foundation stone of the medical college at a grand ceremony. He had promised that construction work of the institute will be completed by 2018 and admission of the first batch for undergraduate medical courses will start from 2019-20.
The college will be built with financial support by Vedanta Aluminium limited. Six months on, a visit to the medical college site at Bhangabari will be frustrating as only a small portion of the boundary work has been completed. Vedanta’s estimated investment was Rs 100 crore. In the PRI poll, the BJD had its worst performance in Mayurbhanj and Kalahandi. To repair the damage, both the districts are to be placed on special footing as far as developmental work is concerned. Now, the priority may shift to Kalahandi medical college and Vedanta may be asked to expedite building the infrastructure for the college. But according to popular opinion, the Government should not expect to eat the cake and have it as well. Vedanta may go slow on the project unless its raw material need is not met. 2019 is fast approaching and commencement of admission may not happen with faith only on the Vedanta that it would make ready the infrastructure by that time. The BJP has rightly harped on yet another failure of the Government.
CM’s double standards; pats anti-project activist
Activist Prafulla Samantara was recently felicitated with Goldman Environment prize popularly known as Green Nobel at Sanfrancisco, USA.
He bagged the award as an environment activist obviously for his vehement opposition to the integrated steel project Posco and the aluminium refinery at lanjigarh. Posco faced nightmarish experience before bidding adieu to Odisha and Vedanta is fighting for its survival after investing around Rs 60,000 crore in its plant at lanjigarh and Jharsuguda. In lanjigarh, the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti (NSS), with which Odisha’s ‘green horn’ Samantra is associated, has been declared by MHA as a Maoist front organistion. It is surprising that even after playing a detractor’s role by stalling these projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore in the name of environment, Samantara received such recognition and the CM of Odisha congratulated him. Is it because the person is bent upon stalling developmental projects in Odisha by shutting the door for employment to thousands of IT graduates who are migrating in search of jobsIJ With Posco gone and Vedanta gasping for breath, the future of Odisha’s mega industrial projects is in jeopardy. By asking the Centre for two more platoons of CRPF to control the left Wing Extremists’ (lWE) violence on the one hand and congratulating Samantra on the other, who is associated with NSS extremism, the CM exposes a double standards. Now, Samantara has set his eyes on the Mahanadi, another western Odisha issue that lures him!
let new UD Min fill R’kela civic body vacancies
The Rourkela Municipal Corporation is facing acute shortage of staff. There are vacancies of as many as 700 posts, including three Assistant Commissioner posts supposed to be filled up by junior cadre OAS officers. ADM Monisha Banerjee, an IAS cadre officer, is heading the RMC in addition to her charge and Commissioner Akshyaya Kumar Mallick who virtually looks after the voluminous work of the corporation, carries a transfer order to be replaced as and when an officer of similar cadre is posted. Mallick is a meek and mild person with ample administrative capacity but the proverbial Damocles’ sword is hanging on his head. The old municipality had 33 wards but after gaining the corporation status, its area of operation has spread with number of wards increasing to 40. The Works Department of the corporation doesn’t have a city engineer of an executive engineer cadre. Executive engineer of Works Division Deepak Kumar Tripathy has been given the additional charge as the vacancy is not filled up since last four months after his transfer. Funds sanctioned for about 100 community toilets are lying idle. The new Minister who is yet to settle and fully apprised of the situation will take some more time to resolve the issue. But going by its volume unless he solves at least 50 per cent of the problems in near future, he will have to account for the failure. He has a stupendous task of cleansing the urban related mess created by his predecessor.
RSP slag on e-auction route a better option
The alleged slag scam of Rs 100 crore in RSP has appeared as the lead story in one of the English dailies published from Bhubaneswar. But, an in-depth analysis of the story hyped as a piece of smart investigative journalism can be dismissed right away and the RSP CEO comes up with a clean chit. It seems an attempt has been made to strengthen the story by tagging Union Minister Jual Oram who had earlier drawn the attention of the Steel Minister to do away with the practice of direct sale of slag and replace the procedure with e auction which may benefit the organization. The RSP promptly had switched over to the latest process, and therefore the projected gain in comparison with the old process came to limelight. Fact remains that the RSP had genuine constraints of space and evacuation of huge quantity of slag had become a critical challenge in the last two years. At one point of time, the RSP had to incur extra cost to shift about 5 lakh tones of accumulated slag and keep the BF-IV and BF-V operational. Even an attempt to sell slag on e-auction route did not yield the desired result. Compared with the old practice some opportunity loss might have occurred but that cannot be categorized as 'scam' because the laid down procedure of the company was followed till switching over to a better option. The present Government has gone for e auction of its coal blocks and the difference of profit calculated runs into several crores. In spite of that not a single head has so far been rolled, because such cases come under loss accrued during an interregnum period. The officers and the CEO of the RSP should rather be hailed for their prompt action to adopt a better option on the first available opportunity.