Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Monday said the coastal state has suffered gross neglect at the hands of the Modi Sarkar with steady decline of central funding.

As PM Modi has embarked on a campaign trail addressing election rallies in Berhampur and Nabarangpur, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh took to ‘X’ to hit out at the Modi-led Government saying that “BJP has steadily reduced Odisha’s central funding in recent years.”

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It may be noted here that Modi addressing the poll rallies in Odisha on Monday had leveled charges against the UPA government for squeezing the budgetary allocation for development works in Odisha during its 10-year stint in government.

The UPA government allocated Rs 1 lakh budgetary grants to Odisha in 10 years while more than Rs 3.5 lakh crore grants were given to the State by the Modi government during the same period, Modi said in a poll rally in Berhampur parliamentary constituency.

Citing CAG reports, the senior Congress leaders said “Central transfers as percentage of Revenue Receipts have been consistently decreasing from 57 per cent in 2017-18 to 38 per cent in 2021-22”.

Similarly, the CAG noted that the State’s share of Union taxes, as a percentage of revenue receipts of the State, has been continuously decreasing from 2018-19 to 2021-22. Grants under recommendation of the Fifteenth Finance Commission have also decreased recently. What happened to the PM’s favourite slogan – Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas? Why is the PM neglecting the people of Odisha?, he questioned.

Stating that the BJP has had an incredibly poor record when it comes to tribal welfare, he charged that the saffron party has overseen a consistent rise in crimes against tribal settlers..

According to the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the crime rate has increased from 21.6% in 2018 to 28.6% in 2022. The BJP’s allocation for Adivasis in the Central Budget has also consistently fallen short of the 8.2% target set by the NITI Aayog in 2017. Why have the PM and the BJP ignored India’s Adivasi communities? The Congress Party has guaranteed a legal status to the SC-ST sub-plan, which would require the Central Government to meet this 8.2% budget target. Can the PM commit to the same?, he maintained.

The Sitalapalli rail wagon factory has been in cold storage ever since it was sanctioned by the UPA government in 2013. The NDA government undertook zero work on this project, and then finally dropped it in 2018. When the current Railway Minister, a Rajya Sabha Member from Odisha, took office, he promised to take the project up again. In September 2021, an official of the East Coast Railway said that the project would be implemented on a PPP model. Till date, however, there has been no progress in this much-awaited project. Two other projects – Gopalpur-Rayagada Railway Line and Rairakhol-Gopalpur Railway Line – have also suffered the same fate. Why has the BJP deceived the people in Odisha? How much longer must they wait for the Sitalapalli wagon factory?, he concluded in the X post.