By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is leaving for New Delhi on a 3-days long visit from Wednesday afternoon. Patnaik will fly to New Delhi by 12.45 flights on Wednesday. On December 19, he will attend third meeting on 150th Birth Anniversary of Gandhiji at Rashtrapati Bhawan.
Before leaving for Bhubaneswar on December 22, the Odisha Chief Minister is expected to meet several Union Ministers on December 20 and 21 regarding various issues relating to Odisha.
Meanwhile, with nationwide protest going on over CAB, the move which has also supported by Naveen Patnaik’s BJD in both the Houses of Parliament, speculations are now raised on secular credentials.
The BJD, which has been following an avowed policy of “equidistance” from the BJP and the Congress, has showed a lot of flexibility in its approach towards the saffron party in the past as well, when it supported the candidature of Ram Nath Kovind in the presidential election of 2017.BJD’s secular image seems to have taken a severe beating following its open support in Parliament to the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, which has since become an Act.
Even though Patnaik mounted a quick damage control exercise by assuring a delegation of Muslim leaders that they have nothing to fear, either from the amended Citizenship Act (CAA) or the move to implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC) across the country, members of the community appear far from satisfied.
While Muslims are angry, it is now clear that the BJD’s support for CAA was a political trade-off aimed at bailing the state out of a tight economic situation. Reliable sources say that with revenue generation from different sources, especially the mining sector – the biggest contributor to the exchequer – not being satisfactory, the government is struggling to keep many of its welfare schemes going. It needs generous assistance from the Centre, not only to keep these schemes going, but also to compensate for the losses sustained in cyclones like Fani which had hit the state in May this year.
Signs of panic on the economic front are clear, with the state government already reducing financial assistance to farmers under the Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) scheme to Rs 4,000 per annum from the initial Rs 10,000. Farmers will get the Rs 6,000 from the Centre’s Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN). Previously, the Odisha government was reluctant to tag KALIA with PM-KISAN, because the former had fetched it handsome votes in the recent elections.
The BJD has supported a number of controversial moves by the Centre, like the triple talaq Bill and the dilution of Article 370.
It also staged a convenient walk-out in the Lok Sabha ahead of a no-confidence vote against the Centre in 2018. Before that, it had backed the controversial Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2015, helping its passage in the Rajya Sabha.
Patnaik was also among the few chief ministers to welcome demonetisation and to extend support to the controversial Goods and Services Tax (GST) when it was facing flak across the country. But in those days, the BJD was also critical of the Centre on issues like the Mahanadi water dispute and the Polavaram controvesy. It had even held a farmers’ rally in Delhi last January to demand a hike in the minimum support price (MSP) of paddy.
But post the 2019 elections, the party seems to have become completely friendly towards the Modi-led Centre. The party’s support for CAB has come as the latest proof that it is now ready to make all kinds of compromises to protect its own interests.
The gains from this compromise have already started flowing, with the state receiving Rs 3,338.22 crore as assistance for rebuilding and restoration work in the areas damaged by cyclone Fani and then getting Rs 5,934 crore from the Centre under CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) programme, perhaps the highest allocation under this head to any state.
