After Nitish, Naveen rants UPA's alleged discrimination

A day after Bihar CM's allegations, Orissa CM accuses UPA govt of discrimination

PTI | August 9, 2011



Taking a cue from his Bihar counterpart, Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik on tuesday accused the Congress led UPA government of adopting a discriminatory policy towards the state on political considerations.

Patnaik said this while addressing a meeting of the ruling BJD's youth wing here to mark the ocassion of "Kranti Diwas."

"The Centre is giving special package to states on political consideration", Patnaik alleged adding that Orissa was a "victim" of UPA government's discriminatory policy.

Patnaik's outbrust against the Centre came a day after Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar made similar allegations in Patna.

Both Patnaik and Kumar made statements on similar lines obviously referring to Centre's package of Rs 21,614 crore granted for West Bengal by the UPA government on Saturday.

Stating that Orissa contributed crores of rupees to the Centre through different ways, Patnaik said there had been no specific plan or package for the poor state.

"Under the federal structure, the Centre has specific responsibility to look after the poor states. However, Orissa's interest had not been taken care of by the Congress led UPA government which came to power with a slogan to run the government for Aam Admi", Patnaik said.

Even they (Centre) did not come to the rescue of the state during natural calamities, Patnaik said, adding that Orissa's demand for a special category status had been ignored.

On the other hand, the chief minister pointed out that the state's genuine rights were denied too. "They (Centre) do not revise royalty of minerals and coal at regular interval, causing serious loss of revenue for the state", Patnaik said.

Terming the UPA government as "fully corrupt", Patnaik said the common man had been finding it very difficult to make both ends meet due to frequent price rise of fuel and essential commodities.

"In an effort to give relief to the poor, the state government had exempted VAT on kerosene and LPG", Patnaik said and asked youths to raise a strong voice against the Centre's "discriminatory policy".

Stating that 'bikas' (development) and 'kalyan' (welfare) are two guiding principles of his party, Patnaik said that he would relentlessly work for overall development of the state.

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