Budget session of Odisha assembly starts on stormy note
BHUBANESWAR: The budget session of the Odisha assembly started on a stormy note on Thursday with the opposition Congress and BJP staging a walkout during governor Ganeshi Lal’s address to the house.
As soon as the session started with address of the governor, the Congress MLAs raised slogans both against the state and Central government over a number of issues and later staged a walkout. A few minutes later, the BJP MLAs also walked out of the house.
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik, who had attended the previous two sessions through videoconference, arrived at the state assembly to attend the governor’s address.
The governor, in his address, lauded the state government’s role in managing the Covid-19 pandemic that has created havoc to public health and economy and also lauded the efforts to revive the pandemic-hit economy of the state.
“My government has been able to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic very effectively, which resulted in containing the spread of the virus, creating proper medical facilities for treatment of the affected and saving precious human lives. Odisha declared the pandemic as a state disaster on March 13th, even before a single case was detected and took pro-active measures,” said Lal.
Stating that Odisha started the lockdown before announcement of the national lockdown, the governor said the lockdown was managed in a smooth manner without any major inconvenience to the general public. He also highlighted on steps taken by the state government like ensuring food security during lockdown, involvement of panchayati raj institutions, community participation and motivating Covid warriors.
Lal said despite the severe impact of Covid-19 on revenue, the state has been able to achieve positive growth in its own revenue which is an indication of recovery in economic activities in the state. The state government has been able to collect its revenue amounting to Rs 38,760 crore by the end of January, 2021 which is about 7.3 per cent more than the collection during the corresponding period of the previous year.
“The pandemic posed a unique challenge to Odisha’s public finances. The crisis resulted in a shrinkage in fiscal space which compelled my Government to reprioritize its public spending to meet the higher demand for spending on Covid management, creating livelihoods opportunities, promoting agriculture as well as the industries and MSME sector for employment generation,” said the governor highlighting steps to manage the finances like ploughing up amount parked in banks, one time settlement to realize arrears and availing easy finances from sources like CAMPA and OMBADC.
Governor said the overall law and order situation in the state remained peaceful during 2020 as no major law and order incident took place due to proactive role of the police. Hailing role of police in Covid management, Lal said as many as 49 police personnel have sacrificed their lives in the line of duty.
The governor’s address also featured state’s success in various fields like infrastructure and industrial development, sports promotion, educational development and promoting e-Governance.
Justifying his party’s decision on walkout, Congress legislature party leader Narasingha Mishra said the governor’s address did not feature any of the sensitive issues of the state like border dispute, mandi mismanagement and rising prices of fuel.
Leader of opposition Pradipta Naik said they staged the walkout over issues like mandi mismanagement, government’s failure to protect state’s border and deteriorating law and order situation. The BJP members also created ruckus over farmers’ issue during motion of thanks to Governor’s address.