No roads to 5,496 Odisha villages!

Bhubaneswar: Believe it or not. 5,496 human habitats in the State have no pucca roads for communication. It is equally strange that the State government has no plans to construct roads to the villages in near future.

Going by a report obtained by OTV, 753 villages in Koraput, 646 in Kalahandi and 443 in Balasore have no roads. The figures in the report show a total of 5,496 villages in the State with less than 100 headcounts have no access to pucca roads.

“These are rural roads which don't fall under any scheme of Rural Development department. In this case, since habitation of each village is below 100, Panchayati Raj, SC/ST Development and Forest departments construct roads from their budgetary allocations,” Rural Development minister Badri Narayan Patra said.

During question hour in the monsoon session of Odisha Assembly, Patra in a written reply to the House had informed that there is no road and transport system to more than 15,247 villages of the State.

However, waking up to such a report, Panchayati Raj department said it would seek proposals to construct pucca roads to these villages.

“If due to some reason or the other roads could not have been constructed, steps would be taken to build roads,” Panchayati Raj minister Arun Sahoo said.