Naveen asks ministers to outline roadmap

Bhubaneswar: Chief minister Naveen Patnaik, who completed 15 years in the office today, asked ministers to prepare a roadmap for the remaining four years of his fourth government.

Chairing a meeting of the Council of Ministers on the occasion of completion of one year in his ongoing stint, Patnaik reviewed the poll manifesto of his party and asked the ministers to check ground realities whether his government has been able to materialise his party’s promises made during the elections a year ago.

Highly-placed sources said the CM will review the performance report of all the departments for a month starting tomorrow.

Talking to media after the meet, Patnaik said, “My government believes in action not in slogans.”

Meanwhile, when asked about the performance of his department in the past one year, Panchayati Raj minister Arun Sahu said, “We have completed the construction of 3.52 lakh pucca houses in a record time this year which is the State government’s biggest achievement. In the current fiscal, we have set a target to complete 5 lakh pucca houses and this will also be achieved in time.”

School and Mass Education minister Devi Prasad Mishra too said that the State government has been able to fulfill its promises made before the 2014 general election. “Be it model school initiative or cycle scheme for SC/ST students, the BJD government led by Naveen Patnaik has been able to reach the poor and downtrodden,” he stated.

Agriculture minister Pradeep Maharathy took the potato issue to laud the Naveen government’s achievement. “When there was a scarcity of potato in the State and West Bengal denied to supply tubers to us, we successfully managed to contain the crisis by importing potatoes from other States. Besides, we supplied the vegetable to the consumers at subsidized rate through Markfed,” he said.

However, Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare minister Sanjay Das Burma, who is holding additional portfolio of Employment and Training, agreed that his department has tasted some failure in the past one year.

“It’s not that we have achieved all success in one year. In the course of implementing some new techniques, we tasted failure too and this is a lesson for us which we will rectify in the days to come,” Das Burma said, adding a lot more to be done to meet the expectations of the people.

However, Rural Development minister Badri Narayan Patra offered the oft-repeated answer by blaming the Centre for delay in release of funds which, he claimed, has affected the implementation of many projects including construction of roads.

“Had the Centre released the funds in time, we would have achieved 100% success in all the projects taken up by our government,” Patra said.