BHUBANESWAR: The Western Odisha Development Council (WODC) is again in the news. This time around, it is not the demand for a change in its headquarters from Bhubaneswar or poor functioning which has grabbed the headlines but the appointment of Asit Tripathy, the incumbent Chief Secretary who will retire from government service on December 31, as the chairperson.
This is for the first time that a bureaucrat (retired though) would head the council ever since its inception on July 2, 1999. In the past though, there have been instances when serving IAS officers were in charge of the body.Those in the know of things say that the government has the prerogative to appoint anybody to the post and there is nothing illegal in Tripathy’s appointment after his retirement. Earlier also, a former vice-chancellor Niranjan Panda had served as the chairperson of the Council from July 31, 2006 to July 31, 2011.
After Kishore Mohanty’s tenure was completed on June 18, 2019, Tripathy was in charge of the Council from July 25, 2019 to August 18, 2019. Besides, Suresh Mohapatra, Development Commissioner, was also in charge from August 19, 2019 to September 25, 2019 following which BJD leader Subash Chandra Chauhan was appointed as the chairperson.
Tripathy, a native of Balangir district, will have the rank of Cabinet minister after taking over as chairperson of the Council. His appointment came a couple of months after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) questioned the council’s very existence over its shoddy performance.
The CAG had rapped WODC for its misplaced priorities in utilisation of funds, execution of unwarranted projects and huge unspent resources. Observing that WODC has failed to meet its mandates, the CAG had pointed out that the State Government provided ` 100 crore per annum from 2008-09 onwards to WODC for undertaking various developmental projects but` 135.71 crore was lying unspent as of March, 2018. Out of this, ` 57.20 crore was unspent for a period of one to 14 years.
BJP MP from Bargarh Suresh Pujari said that appointment of Tripathy as the chairperson will not make much difference because the Council has been made non-functional by the Chief Minister. “So what is the point whether a retired bureaucrat has been appointed or a politician is given the post,” he said.
Alleging that not a penny was released by the Council during the last financial year, Pujari demanded that the government should make it clear what it did with `100 crore, the corpus of the Council. He said that even after funds are allocated, they are not released. He demanded that the State government should come out with a white paper on funds allocation, release and utilisation of the Council since its inception.
Congress MLA Santosh Saluja said it will be a demotion for Tripathy as he will be under the Development Commissioner. He said a politician in the post would have worked for the people.
The appointment has also brought to the fore the issue of rehabilitation of retired bureaucrats which is a trend though not limited to Odisha only. The Opposition have criticised the decision strongly and alleged that this is a practice of the Odisha government under CM Naveen Patnaik since long and from time to time retired IAS officers have been appointed to different bodies including statutory panels.