AG dubs Idco's land allotment discriminatory, says govt lacks policy

Bhubaneswar: The accountant-general (AG) of Odisha has found land allotments made by the Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) to be discriminatory and has observed that the State government has no definitive policy for land allotment.

Highlighting that there have been instances where undue preference have been shown to private institutions over government ones, AG Amar Pattnaik in his missive to chief secretary Gokul Chandra Pati has advised the State government to create a special policy pertaining to land allocation for industrial purposes.

According to the AG, there have been certain cases where Idco has rejected proposals for reasons best known to its authorities whereas it has shown undue favour to specific companies without assigning any justification, raising serious doubts over the legitimacy of the process.

From a total of 1,245 applications, 714 proposals have been rejected by Idco without citing any reason, out of which 72 applications have been withheld for reasons only known to the authorities, the AG added, urging the authorities to review the rejected and withheld proposals and submit an action-taken report (ATR) to the Public Accounts Committee at the earliest.