Besides the rising crimes against women in the State, the issue of rampant land grab in the capital city of Bhubaneswar has further tarnished the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD Government's image.
A Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report tabled in the State Assembly recently has found that the Government has, between 2000 and 2012, allotted 464.479 acres of its land in Bhubaneswar in 337 cases without any policy, procedure, regulation, rules or manuals.
Senior Congress leader Narasingha Mishra has blamed the Chief Minister in this regard, pointing out that Patnaik is also in charge of the General Administration Department (GAD), which deals with the matters relating to land in the city.The CAG report has held the GAD responsible for the land scam.
The lands in question have been allotted in favour of corporate houses, hotels, private hospitals, certain institutions and some influential persons including the relatives of Ministers.
Interestingly when the attention is now focused on the 464.479 acres of land, nobody is bothered about the 474.296 acres of land under the illegal possession of certain people in the city.
The Chief Minister while replying a question in the Assembly on March 25 admitted that unprotected vacant Government lands in the capital city are being encroached. He assured the House that steps are being taken to evict the encroachers under the provisions of the relevant Act.
However, the Chief Minister did not give any timeline by which the encroachers would be evicted.
The CAG report is certainly a challenge for the Government, particularly the Chief Minister. Of the total 474.296 acres of land under encroachment, 148.069 acres alone are in the Jayadev Vihar area.
Jayadev Vihar is followed by Chandrasekharpur with 33.282 acres, Gadakan with 30.860 acre and Patia and other areas with 27.268 acres.
The Government has identified 10,579 encroachment cases, but there appears to be no serious effort to free the encroachments.