BHUBANESWAR: National general secretary of BJP Ram Madhav on Wednesday said the BJD government has not been able to take advantage of the liberal assistance provided by Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre.
“The State is neither sending proposals for new projects nor utilising funds sanctioned by the Centre. In many of the Centrally-sponsored programmes, the fund utilisation of the State is only four to six per cent,” he told a media conference here.
Madhav was addressing a workshop on Union Budget-2020 at the state headquarters of the BJP here which was attended by all MLAs, MPs, state functionaries and leaders of party’s intellectual cell.
He said the Central assistance for Odisha, including state’s share in Central tax, Central grant and provision for railway infrastructure in the Union Budget for 2020-21 will be about Rs 73,596 crore.
“It is the responsibility of the State Governments to make full utilisation of funds sanctioned in the budget. Instead, the BJD Government is only blaming the Centre for its failure which is unfortunate,” the BJP leader said.
The Central Government’s thrust in the Union budget is on infrastructure, water treatment and agriculture. With many districts of the State water-stressed, it can benefit from the Rs 3.5 lakh crore of the Central budget by submitting proposals under Jal Jivan Mission to address the water problem, he added.
“We expect Odisha Government to implement the Central schemes properly,” Madhav said.
Noting that the Union Budget will be a boon for performing states, the BJP leader said Odisha can immensely benefit from the proposal to expand PM-KUSUM to provide 20 lakh farmers for setting up stand-alone solar pumps and for another 15 lakh farmers to solarise their grid-connected pump sets.
“In this Budget, we made special efforts to give compulsory support to the states based on their performance. If the performance of State Government is good, Centre is ready to give them further assistance. For example in area of fisheries, water resources and solar energy we have given enormous allocation,” he said.
The Centre is ready to provide full cooperation to the state which is predominantly an agriculture-based economy if more proposals come under fishery, dairy, irrigation and allied activities.
It is sad that the people of Odisha are deprived of health initiative Ayushman Bharat Yojana as the state government is not implementing the scheme, he rued.