CM faces privilege move

BHUBANESWAR: A day after his diatribe against the Centre, a belligerent Congress on Wednesday sought to corner Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. Party chief whip Prasad Harichandan moved a privilege motion against the Chief Minister for ‘misleading’ the House on release of Central funds for modernisation of police forces (MPF). Harichandan contested Naveen’s statement blaming the Centre for inadequate funding as gimmick in view of the panchayat polls. The Chief Minister had said while replying to the debate on supplementary demand of grant for the Home department that the Centre has not increased its share in the MPF scheme even though the expenditure by the State Government has been 99 percent since 2000. Harichandan claimed the State Government has failed to spend the funds. Reeling out statistics, he said while the Centre provided ` 69 cr under the scheme during 2008-09, the State could spend only ` 42 cr and surrendered about ` 26 cr. In 2009-10, the Centre gave ` 93.40 cr but again ` 61.47 cr was surrendered as the State utilised only ` 31.93 cr. Similar was the case in 2010-11. While the State got ` 101.42 cr, it spent ` 80.14 cr and surrendered ` 21.28 cr.  He asked the Chief Minister to explain as to how 99 per cent of the Central funds were utilised in the State. Criticising the Chief Minister for trying to blame the Centre to cover up the inefficiency of his own Government, Harichandan wanted to know the result of the performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) into the implementation of MPF in Odisha.  Referring to the observation made by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram here after reviewing the anti-naxalite programmes last month, Harichandan alleged that the State Government has failed to utilise Central funds.Speaker Pradip Kumar Amat said that he will examine the notice. The Congress also hit back at Naveen for his remarks that the party members were shedding crocodile tears in the House over issues of development concerning Odisha. It is the Chief Minister who is shedding crocodile tears and not the Congress MLAs, Harichandan chided.