When the UPA Government at the Centre accorded approval to the Polavaram Project Authority (PPA), it had kicked off a storm of protest in Odisha, with the ruling BJD creating uproar and launching a virulent attack against the Centre on the premises that it was step-motherly toward Odisha so far as executing the multipurpose dam project is concerned.
Then BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi too had promised the voters of Seemandhra that they would give priority to the Polavaram project if voted to power. The BJD leaders had criticised both Modi and Rahul, while Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik too came up with an adverse comment on Modi.
The BJD had threatened to stage State-wide stir against the project citing the submergence of landmass and forest area in the backwater of the dam at the proposed height. The Chief Secretary had also said that the State Government would again move the Supreme Court if the project in its proposed height will have adverse impact on Odisha. But he had said that steps would be taken only after getting the complete environmental assessment report of the dam.
However, all the hurly-burly seems to have fizzled out and the blazing guns have silenced even as the NDA Government cleared the project within a few days of its holding the reins of the country and an ordinance in this connection was signed by President Pranab Mukherjee.
During the first meeting of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik with Modi after he was sworn in as the Prime Minister on Monday last, Patnaik seems to have gone soft on the Polavaram front and treated the Centre with kid gloves. The earlier belligerence and aggressive anti-Centre stance was missing. Even in the State, top BJD fighter Sanjaya Das Burma and his associates who had been very vocal in their protest against Polavaram since beginning and described any positive move on the dam project by the Centre as anti-Odisha, have almost remained silent. For a time, it is giving an impression that Das Burma and his team were playing politics over the dam project more than having any real and genuine concerns for the people of Malkangiri and the over-all interest of the State vis-à-vis Polavaram, opined political observers here.
Talking to reporters, after the meeting, Patnaik said, “I have put forward several demands of Odisha like...to recognise the general concerns of Odisha on submergence and flooding of Malkanagiri and also Polavaram Project...” “We don’t have any objection to declare Polavaram as a national project. But there should be an embankment(Adi Bandha) to safeguard 10 villages and 4,000 acres of land from backwater submergence,” said former Nabarangpur MP and Congress leader Pradeep Majhi.
Majhi hit out at Patnaik, saying that the latter’s meeting with Modi and raising Polavaram issue was a sort of eyewash. Majhi said that the BJD is not interested to protect the interest of tribals to be affected by the backwater.
Meanwhile, the Samata Kranti Dal (SKD) held a demonstration against the move of the NDA Government on Polavaram. Its founder president and former Union Minister flayed the State Government for its about-turn on the controversial issue. He said that like the UPA Government the NDA too has started neglecting the concerns of Odisha.