In a reaction to the race among political parties to take credit for the Paradip Refinery Project, former Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang, now in the BJP, on Friday claimed that the project would have been shifted to another place of the county if he had not involved personally and arranged land for it.
Gamang made the claim in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He said the Narasingha Rao Union Government had taken the decision to set up the refinery in a joint venture in 1992 when Biju Patnaik was Chief Minister. In 1998, approval was given for a 9-MMPTA refinery project in JV and the JB Patnaik Odisha Government agreed to provide incentive for the project.
“later in the year, the IOCl decided to set up the refinery on its own. Then, I discussed with the land losers of the project site and the IOCl Chairman separately and finalised the compensation for land losers. The land acquisition process started then,” Gamang said in the letter.
In May 2000, PM Vajpayee laid foundation-stone for the project. But the project was put off due to withdrawal of incentives by the State Government. In 2004, The State Government restored incentives by singing an MoU with the IOCl. All these three years due to stagnation, the project work got hampered, resulting in time overrun and cost overrun.
In 2006, PM Manmohan Singh gave the final approval in principle with revised estimations. The final investment of the revised costs was approved in 2009 when Vajpayee was the PM.
From 2009 to 2016, the funds had been provided by the UPA Governments and the NDA Government to the refinery.