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Following is an excerpt from New Indian Express on this.

… the High Court on Wednesday asked the State Government to initiate stringent action against road blockades.

A division bench of Justices B P Das and M M Das directed that the Government make adequate provision in laws for realising the cost of damage caused to public and private property from persons staging road blockades. The recovery can be done under the Orissa Public Demand Recovery Act, the bench stated.

Expressing concern over students’ rising propensity to violence, the court also called for amending the Orissa Education Act so that they can be made accountable for the acts of organising road blockades and causing damage to public or private property. Their acts should be reflected in their conduct certificates, the court said.

Instructions should be issued to school and college authorities to obtain undertakings from parents or guardians that they would pay up for the loss caused by their children or wards while indulging in such activities.

Along with these stern directives, the bench directed the Government to pay Rs 1 lakh compensation to one Chambara Soy of Gobarghati village in Jajpur district for his son’s death. Soy could not take his son to hospital in time due to the Kalinga Nagar road blockade. The amount may be recovered from persons involved in blocking the road, the court said.

The ruling came in response to the petition filed by Soy early this year seeking adequate compensation, action against persons carrying out the blockade and also against officials who did not act on his FIR after his son’s death.

The Home department, Collector and SP of Jajpur have been ordered to take effective steps on the FIR lodged by the petitioner at the Kalinga Nagar police station.

Earlier, in the process of hearing, the court had instructed collectors and SPs in the State to place before it the number of road blockades and such acts organised in their areas between October 1, 2005 and September 30, 2006.

The affidavits filed revealed a total of 523 incidents within the period. Most of the reasons, as examined by the court, were found to be flimsy.

Following is from Team Orissa‘s September 2007 newsletter.

Following is an article and a photo from Dharitri on this.

Kalinga times reports that a new squad has been formed to check the theft of minerals from rich regions in Orissa. Excerpts:

… Orissa government has finally decided to constitute a special enforcement squad to conduct frequent raids to check theft and illegal transportation of various minerals in different parts of the State.

The decision about formation of the special squad was taken at a review meeting organised by the Steel and Mines Department of the State government here on Wednesday.

The squad, to be named State Mining Enforcement Squad, will be headed by a Mining Department official. It will also have an official of the Forest Department and 12 security personnel.

The squad will be put in place within a month, the meeting decided.

Steel and Mines Minister Padmanabha Behera who presided over the meeting has requested the Forest and Homes Departments to depute their staff for the squad.

In fact, it took the Steel and Mines Department seven months to take a formal decision on the formation of the special squad.

In a statement issued after a similar review meeting held in February this year, the Department had announced that it would constitute a squad to check smuggling of minerals.

Smuggling of minerals has been growing in the State in the recent years.

A total of 322 persons were booked by the Mines Department from April 1, 2006 to January 31 this year and fine amount of Rs 3.25 crore was collected from them.

Besides, 191 vehicles used in illegal transportation of different minerals were also seized during the period.”

I hope this does not get lost in bureaucratic hassles.

Following is an excerpt from a ndtvprofit.com report.

… According to sources the company is sitting on iron ore reserves of over 500-600 mt and that could be a reason why the state may not be keen to hand over more reserves to Tata Steel.

While this could trigger a fresh round of battle between Tata Steel and the Orissa government, the later is clear that it wants investments in the state for the reserves it will hand out.

Orissa wants Tata Steel to set up the promised greenfield project of six mt steel plant in Kalinganagar in order to reach Orissa’s target of 75 mt of steel capacity by 2020.

Tata Steel in return wants iron ore mines for plans not just in Orissa but also for expansion in Jharkhand aimed at 12 mt steel plant and Jamshedpur to be expanded to 10 mt from 5 mt currently. …

Following are excerpts from a New Indian Express report by Samiran Sarangi. I talked to him on phone. He says that if everything goes well the expectation is that the flight from BBSR would start around mid-November or early December.

Is Orissa set to have its first international flight – and that too to Singapore? Air India has reportedly agreed to oblige, provided travel and tour operators here ensure a good number of passengers. Travel agents, on their part, are confident of making it possible. More so because the flight that Air India wants to operate via the city is its low cost carrier Air India Express. It would operate on the Kolkata-Singapore route from October 7. A round trip would cost a traveller just about Rs 14,500, as against the normal fare of Rs 24,000. A team from Air India, which visited the city sometime back to study the market here, has asked for at least 40 to 50 passengers on each flight. The 185-seater Boeing 737-800 would be operating thrice a week. "We firmly believe that with the present flow of travellers from the State to Singapore, we can achieve the target," said a confident Benjamin Simon, head of the city-based tour firm Travellink. According to him, roughly 30 to 40 persons head for the island country from Orissa every week as business and leisure travellers. A considerable number of them are from the Western belt of Sambalpur, Jharsuguda and Rourkela. … A section of the operators are designing packages that would also include board and lodging at the existing fare at Rs 24,000. It would basically be a three-night-two-day affair and include sightseeing.

I initially read about it in a New Indian Express report, whose excerpts we give below. I could not believe it. But then I googled the net and found some links which make the above mentioned New Indian Express report believable.

The public sector telecom major rolled out evolution data optimised (EVDO) card to provide wireless broadband Internet with speeds up to 2.4 Mbps along with the network interface card (NIC) with 144 Kbps speed. Built in the plug to surf form, the cards can be attached to the USB port or PCIMCI slot of the desktops or laptops to access Internet.

The cards would provide unlimited Internet access with fixed charges of Rs 250 a month and can be purchased outright or acquired on a monthly rental basis.

Based on CDMA-2000 technology platform, the EVDO card would be immediately available in Bhubaneswar and its outskirts like Khurda but the NIC card can be used anywhere. Three EVDO base transmission system (BTS) systems have been commissioned and 10 more are underway. Thirty more are to be added this financial year enabling expansion to other cities, Chief General Manager, Orissa, SM Talwar said.

… Speaking to media persons, Talwar said BSNL had gone on an overdrive to increase its presence in mobile and Internet, particularly broadband, sector in Orissa. … Broadband penetration, which has been a sore point for the company, is set to look up too. Launched in 2005, the broadband capacity in the State is a mere 15,500 and connections given are around 14,350. But, infrastructure is being spruced up on a war-footing with around 70,000 ports installed across the State. Broadband facilities would be made available in all telecom districts and sub-divisional headquarters, Talwar added.

Business Standard has some more details on this. Following is a short excerpt.

The customers can have unlimited internet access through NIC/EVDO cards at additional fixed monthly charges of Rs 250 only. The consumers have the option of direct purchase or monthly fixed charge basis.

While the monthly fixed charge for NIC card has been fixed at Rs 150 per month it is Rs 200 for EVDO card. The direct purchase of NIC card costs about Rs 4,500 and EVDO card costs about Rs 6,500.

Following is a big excerpt from a Telegraph report.

Naveen Patnaik today insisted on the correction of regional imbalance in the country.

“National integration cannot be complete unless there is equitable growth,” he said, while participating in the deliberations of the sub-committee of National Integration Council at New Delhi today.

Historically, the eastern region has not been able to develop as fast as some of the other regions of the country. Enormous resources are required to improve the infrastructure of this region in the form of roads, railways, ports and power.

Without such infrastructure this region cannot attract the kind of investment that would be required for a holistic growth of the national economy, argued Patnaik.

“This may ultimately lead to marginalisation of these regions which would be detrimental to national integration,” he said.

The committee accepted his suggestion and agreed to include this as an agenda of the meeting of the National Integration Council that is going to take place shortly. Naveen also observed that it is equally important to develop human resource of the backward region for the people of those areas to reap the benefits of economic growth. He stressed the need for enrichment of the social capital of the states.

“The country should be prepared to invest in education, including technical education, health, sanitation and governance with special emphasis on the eastern region of the country,” he said.

Patnaik further offered to host the meeting of the Eastern Zonal Council at Bhubaneswar, which was accepted by Union home minister Shivraj Patil, who chaired the meeting today.

The following is from a PIB release.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs today gave its approval for the following:

(i)         Peripheral towns of Panchkula and SAS Nagar (Mohali) urban agglomeration will be included in the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) city of Chandigarh as these towns are entirely in continuum to Chandigarh and in fact, are spill over of the growth of Chandigarh.

(ii)                 Naya Raipur, a satellite city, will be included in the urban agglomeration of Chhatisgarh State Capital, Raipur, so that simultaneous cohesive development of Naya Raipur, alongwith existing city of Raipur, is possible.  Presently, total area of Naya Raipur comprises 41 villages.

            With the inclusion of the above two in JNNURM, the following benefits will be reaped:

(i)                  Infrastructure development of both Panchkula and Mohali, that are spillovers of Chandigarh would be possible through JNNURM funds along with JNNURM City of Chandigarh.

(ii)                 Maya Raipur, a satellite city of Raipur, will also have access to JNNURM funds for its infrastructure development.

            JNNURM was launched by the government of India in December, 2005 to implement reforms driven planned development of identified cities in a Mission mode, with focus on efficiency in urban infrastructure / service delivery mechanism and basic services to the urban poor with community participation and accountability of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) / Parastatals towards the citizens.

Why is not the Orissa government making a similar case for Cuttack to be included in the Bhubaneswar JNNURM project?