Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan took a dig at the state BJD government at a function to mark Good Governance Day by rhetorically asking if the failure of providing a correct and complete list of farmers under the PM KISSAN scheme is good governance.
He referred to the fact that thousands of farmers in Odisha were deprived of Rs 6000 which they would have got had the state government furnished a complete list to the centre.
PM Modi has given Rs 60,000 crore to farmers of Odisha but where is the state government’s KALIA funds, he asked.
Ridiculing CM Naveen Patnaik’s claim to fight corruption, Pradhan said the big fish go scot free while anganwadi worker or a clerk gets caught.
If huge property is amassed is the owner of the house responsible or the servant, he remarked in an implicit reference to the Akash Pathak case and his links to MLA Pradip Panigrahi who at one point in time was a favourite of the CM.
Pradhan recalled how late PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee had visited Odisha in the aftermath of the 1999 super cyclone and declared that there would be no dearth of funds for development of the state.
He had come to this region and expedited the Oil Refinery project , which was commissioned by PM Narendra Modi, noted the Union Minister.
He drew a comparison between the development of Kutch in Gujarat which was devastated by an earthquake in 2001 and that of Odisha districts that had faced the super cyclone in 1999. The Minister unveiled a statue of Vajpayee .
During the trip today, Union Minister Pradhan faced a black flag demonstration by CPI and Congress activists who raised slogans of ‘ Go Back’ and denounced the fuel price hike as well as the unfulfilled promises of jobs for local youth at Paradip oil refinery and petro chemical complex.