BHUBANESWAR:Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday demanded that verification report of beneficiaries who had applied for the State Government’s own food security scheme should be made public.
Alleging that there is large scale irregularities in implementation of the scheme, the Union Minister said BJD activists have been made beneficiaries under the scheme like the former Cuttack mayor by ignoring the claims of non-BJD people. Refuting Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s charge that there has been scams in the implementation of Ujjwala and Skill Mission schemes, Pradhan said Maharashtra Academy of Engineering and Education Research, which had felicitated Naveen as the best Chief Minister, is involved in the skill scam and strong action will be taken after investigation.
Stating that LPG cylinder has reached the homes of 34 lakh poor women through the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, Pradhan challenged the Chief Minister to select a beneficiary in any village of any district to verify the truth.
The BJD has hit back at the Union Minister by stating that the implementation of the Ujjwala scheme is a complete failure. In a written reply to a question from BJD member Prashanta Nanda in Parliament, the Union Minister had said 30,48,000 households in Odisha have been provided LPG cylinder under the scheme in the last two years. However, only 8,18,000 beneficiaries refilled their cylinders in 2016-17 and the number dropped to 6,45,000 in 2017-18, BJD spokesman Pratap Keshari Deb said.
Stating that the State Government or the district administration is not given the charge of selecting the beneficiaries under the scheme, Deb said the list is prepared by BJP leaders. Deb further alleged that the BJP is first distributing gas connections free to attract people and later asking them to refill it at market rate and the subsidy amount is also not credited to their bank accounts on time.