Congress pitches for higher royalty, special package before PM

The state unit of Congress, the main opposition party in the state, has demanded that the Centre should increase mining royalties to boost the revenue of Orissa, while submitting its list of demands to the Prime Minister during his short visit to the Pradesh Congress committee (PCC) office here.

“An economically backward state like Orissa is greatly dependent on mining royalty for its development and welfare. As such there is urgent need to substantially increase the royalty on minerals, specially on iron ore and coal,” said the memorandum from state Congress.

The state party unit also said Orissa, being a victim of maoist violence, should be given special financial package and added that the current special funds provided by Centre for eight tribal districts are inadequate.

“The funds are inadequate considering the extreme backwardness of the region, the highest poverty ratio in the country and the large tribal population. Besides, large scale misutilisation and corruption undermine the outcomes. In these circumstances, a Special Central Package for development of tribal and maoist influenced districts is imperative,” the party said while justifying its demand.

It may be noted that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has already demanded the Centre to impose windfall tax on super normal profits earned by miners and has requested the Manmohan Singh government to grant special category status to Orissa. The CM reiterated his demand to the PM on Tuesday and handed him a memorandum in this regard at the inaugural ceremony of 99th Indian Science Congress, held at KIIT University.

The Pradesh Congress Committee pressed the Prime Minister to take steps to order a CBI inquiry into the mining scam, touted as surpassing the magnitude of 2G scam and requested him to widen the scope of current CBI investigation into MGNRGA scam to cover all 30 districts instead of six districts and look into the accounts of last five years instead of just one year (2010-11) now.

It also requested Singh to take steps to appoint a central monitoring committee to scrutinise the spending of the state government, made under Central government sponsored programme.

Among other demands, Congress said the Central government should consider setting up of an IIM and an IIIT in the state and should plan for establishing a Central Tribal University. It also said there should be permanent benches of High Court in western and south Orissa as per the Jashwant Singh commission report.