The state unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today said central government PSUs should not use their corporate social responsibility (CSR) fund for government schemes that are meant to buy votes, after three such companies turned down the state government's request to fund the much-hyped Aahaar scheme.
The scheme, modelled on Tamil Nadu's Amma Unavagam scheme, aimed to provide food to urban poor at a cheap cost.
"Your (Biju Janata Dal) election expenditure cannot be met out of CSR fund. CSR is not for charity. It is for sustainable development and creating assets," said Bijay Mohapatra, senior BJP leader at a press meet here.
The BJD government announced the scheme eying urban local body elections in the state and hence, the PSUs must not support such a politically motivated scheme, he added.
On March 2, the state government had announced launching of Aahaar scheme in which rice and dal curry would be provided to urban poor at Rs 5 per meal from April 1, coinciding with the celebration of Utkal Divas, observed annually to commemorate creation of Odisha as a separate state.
However, since the scheme was conceived after the presentation of the state budget, the government had decided to fund it from the corpus of the Chief Minister's Relief Fund and CSR kitty of corporate houses.
Aahaar will be implemented in five municipal corporation areas-Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Sambalpur and Rourkela. Each corporation will set up four cheap food outlets near public places like bus stand, railway station and hospital targeting serving of meals to 1,000 urban poor at each outlet.
However, none of these municipal corporations figure in the list of urban local bodies scheduled to go for next month.
The Housing and Urban Development department, the nodal department selected to carry out the scheme, had asked Tata Steel, National Aluminium Company (Nalco), Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) and Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) to provide funds as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) for Aahaar.
As per the state government's request, each corporate will shell out Rs 64 lakh towards one-time cost of the scheme. Besides, each of them will pay Rs 2.19 crore annually to subsidise the cost of the meals.
MCL, SAIL (RSP) and Nalco have backed away from the project on the plea that their board did not approve of the expenditure. BJD said, these Central PSUs, who initially showed interest to fund the scheme, later backed out due to pressure from the BJP leaders from the state.
BJD has questioned the moves of the PSUs saying, since they extended support to schemes like Swachh Bharat, launched by the Centre, there was nothing wrong in supporting the Odisha government's cheap food scheme.
At the press meet, Mohapatra also questioned the state government's intention behind raising power tariff, despite loads of pending dues on the privately managed distribution companies (discoms).
"The government did away with the escrow account, which was meant to receive payments to be made by discoms to Gridco. All the discoms are yet to pay over Rs 3,000 crore to power trader Gridco. There must be a thorough audit of the finances of the discoms." Mohapatra said.
The BJD responded to the allegation of BJP saying, though the state government had written to Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) not to raise the power tariff, the tariff was hiked due to intervention of Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC).
On charges of exemption of Rs 128 crore electricity duty to Sesa Sterlite power unit, the ruling party said, since the matter was under trial in the court, it would not comment.
