OMBADC to fulfill basic needs of Mining affected Villages in Odisha

Bhubaneswar, 27th Feb: Odisha Mineral Bearing Areas Development Corporation (OMBADC) in its Board of Directors Meeting held under the Chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi in secretariat conference hall today morning resolved to address to the basic needs of the mining affected villages.

Chief Secretary Padhi advised to prioritize the housing, pipe water supply, sanitation and farm forestry activities in the first phase.  Development Commissioner Sri R. Balakrishnan present in the meeting advised to have appropriate convergence of the projects and funds between OMBADC and State budgeted schemes for more effective outcomes.

The project proposals submitted by the departments like Panchayati Raj, Rural Development and Forest & Environment  were discussed and approved in the meeting. Available data show, as of now,  523 villages of 29 blocks in 8 districts like Angul, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Jharsuguda, Keonjhar, Koraput Mayurbhanj and  Sundargarh have been identified as mining affected villages. Accordingly, the projects for housing, sanitation, pipe water supply and farm forestry have been prepared with a preliminary estimate of Rs 720 cr.

It may be pertinent to mention here that OMBADC has been constituted in compliance with the orders of the Hon’ble Apex Court as per the recommendations of Central Empowered Committee. Replying to a media quarry, General Manager ( Operations) of the Corporation and Additional PCCF Sri Subash Chandra Swain said that  about 50% of  NPV collected from the mining leases would be utilized through this corporation for basic developmental activities in the identified villages.  State Govt had provided Rs.1 lakh as token share capital at the initial level for formation of the Corporation.

So far, Rs.869.42 cr has been received by the Corporation. The Board resolved that the interest earned from the deposit of this corpus amount would be added with the corpus and would be utilized for the same purpose.

The Development Commissioner Sri R. Balakrishnan, Principal Secretary Forest & Environment Sri Suresh Chandra Mohapatra, Principal Secretary Steel & Mines Sri Raj Kumar Sharma, Principal Secretary Rural Development Sri Pradeepta Kumar Mohapatra, Secretary  Panchayati Raj Sri Deo Ranjan Kumar Singh, PCCF and CEO of the Corporation Sri S.S. Srivastav, Additional PCCF and General Manager of the Corporation Sri Swain along with members of the Board of Directors participated in the discussions.