More funds to take on left-wing extremism

Finance Minister Prasanna Acharya on Thursday placed the supplementary budget of Rs 3932.41 crore in the Assembly. Apart from focussing on infrastructure, agriculture  and social security, the Minister has an additional provision of Rs 26.14 crore for construction of buildings, fortification of police stations in Left-wing Extremism affected areas and modernisation of police force. Another Rs 32.44 crore was given for modernisation police forces under non-plan head.

The Minister said a supplementary provision of Rs 80 crore has been made for cement concrete roads in panchayats. The Energy Department has received a grant of Rs 33 crore for strengthening electricity supply system (from 33 KV lines onwards) in the KBK region. He said Rs 48.50 cr ore has been provided for construction of anganwadi centres in addition to the original budget estimate of Rs 51.50 crore.

 A supplementary provision of Rs 30 crore has been made for establishment of the National Law College in Cuttack. The proposed Government engineering colleges at Berhampur and Bhawanipatna will get an additional provision of Rs 6.94 crore  and Rs 8 crore respectively in addition to Rs 3.06 cr ore each given in the annual budget. An additional amount of  Rs 56.27 crore was sanctioned under the Rs 2-a-kg-rice scheme for the BPL families  and Rs 19.88 crore for strengthening PDS, Acharya said.

Responding to a query, Finance Secretary JK Mohapatra said there will be an additional requirement of Rs 343.87 crore from the State while the balance amount will be in the form of transfer of grants from capital to revenue head. Of the total supplementary provision, Rs 2677.21 crore is under state plan, Rs 577.45 crore under non-plan, Rs 265.81 crore under central plant and Rs 411.93 crore under centrally sponsored plan.