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CM's absence sends Opposition scurrying out of assembly

Members of the Biju Janata Dal, Janata Dal and Bharatiya Janata Party staged a noisy walkout from the Orissa assembly when Speaker Chintamani Dyan Samantra refused to call Chief Minister J B Patnaik to reply to a government motion on rampant corruption and misappropriation of funds at the block level.

The JD members first walked out of the House alleging that the ruling Congress was not concerned about corruption in the execution of various anti-poverty programmes in many blocks.

JD leader in the House Nurshingha Mishra said it would be a meaningless debate if the chief minister did not come to the House to reply on the subject. All the members, he added, had expressed concern about the corrupt practices.

When the speaker declined to call the chief minister to the House Mishra said his party would not participate, and the Dal members walked out.

The other two parties followed suit later when the speaker ignored a similar demand by BJP legislator Bijaya Mahapatra.

Earlier, the BJD members had trooped into the well demanding a reply from the chief minister.

The motion was moved by government Chief Whip Debendra Nath Mansingh about alleged corruption and misappropriation of funds under the Jawahar Rojgar Yojana and the employment assurance scheme programmes at the block level.

Mansingh admitted that there had been several lacunae in the action plan in implementing the programmes. He regretted that the village committees were not properly overseeing the programmes.

TheBJD's Kamala Das alleged that all government guidelines had been openly violated while implementing the programmes. Her party colleagues Amar Satpathy, Kalpataru Das and Maheswar Mahanty claimed more than 75 per cent of the money earmarked for the programmes had been misappropriated.

Mahanty and Das demanded the formation of a committee to look into their allegation, and urged the government to clear all proceedings against the erring block development officers and engineers within a stipulated period.

They also demanded that the vigilance committee, both at the state and district levels, be strengthened.

Independent member Bal Gopal Mishra said a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry be ordered into the matter.

Minister of State for Panchayat Raj Nabin Chandra Narayan Das in his reply informed the House that the government was aware of the allegations and had initiated several steps to strengthen block administration. He said a state level vigilance cell had been set up to investigate the allegations, and actions were taken against 78 block development officers of whom 23 have been suspended.

The minister said steps had been taken to appoint one auditor in each block to conduct a pre-audit.

UNI

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