The Assembly on Monday passed the demand for grants of Housing and Urban Development Department through voice vote and budgets of 18 departments through guillotine, a parliamentary practice for passing budgets without holding discussion.
As the House reassembled after lunch break, Congress and BJP members rushed into the Well of the House protesting the police attack on members of Chhatra Congress and a scribe of a local Odia daily. As the slogan shouting continued, Speaker Pradip Kumar Amat had to adjourn the House till 6 pm.The Speaker took up the voting on budget of the Housing and Urban Development Department.
Ashok Panda of the BJD initiated the discussion on the demand for grants. Housing and Urban Development Minister Debi Prasad Mishra concluded his reply within a couple of minutes. Nothing could be heard in the din. The Speaker rushed through the voting process and guillotined the budgets of 18 departments including Finance, Law, Commerce and Transport, Parliamentary Affairs and the Odisha Legislative Assembly.
In his reply to the demands, Mishra said Government has made significant increase in plan expenditure for 2013-14 to meet the growing needs for infrastructure development.
Drinking water policy for equitable distribution of drinking water in urban local bodies (ULBs)of the State has been proposed.
The Government has made plan provision of Rs 1,162 crore for 2013-14 as against Rs 664.56 crore in 2012-13 to improve the existing roads, city and town bus service in ULBs and from Bhubaneswar to Cuttak and Puri.
The Minister said externally aided sewerage projects for Cuttack will be implemented in two packages amounting to Rs 1288 crore. The project will use state-of-art micro tunnelling and trenchless technology and pre-fabricated manholes. The total project cost is estimated to be Rs 2,600 crore and it will be completed by February 2015.