BHUBANESWAR: A day after the state government repackaged the ‘Ama Gaon Ama Bikash’ scheme to ‘Ama Odisha, Nabin Odisha’ with a promised financial assistance of Rs 50 lakh to every panchayat, the BJP on Tuesday said it was an attempt to cover up the failure of the old scheme.
Senior BJP leader and former president of the party’s state unit Samir Mohanty said the state government had sanctioned around 3,24,523 projects under ‘Ama Gaon Ama Bikash’ scheme of which 2,94,623 projects remained incomplete. This shows that the scheme has failed miserably, he said.
“Since the old scheme launched just before the 2019 Assembly elections failed, it has been relaunched with a new package to hoodwink the people. The real motive is to allow BJD workers and Mission Shakti groups to carry out projects without any tender. This new scheme is to promote corruption through institutional mechanism,” Mohanty said in a media conference here.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik was sanctioning projects after direct discussion with the villagers and elected representatives of panchayats through video conferencing. Now it is his duty to explain why more than 90 per cent projects are incomplete.
Mohanty alleged the BJD has converted Ama Odisha to 50 per cent commission Odisha in the last 23 years. As the BJD government has nothing to its credit, it has been trying to fool people by launching new schemes.
The Congress accused the government of launching the scheme to woo people ahead of elections. State president Sarat Pattanayak and Congress campaign committee chairman Bijay Patnaik stated that by introducing the scheme to strengthen rural infrastructure, the state government has admitted there had been no development in the villages in the past.