The Naveen Patnaik government, which is now facing a serious image crisis following expose of largescale irregularities in mining lease and mineral trading and land allotment to private industrial houses, on Tuesday announced to provide bicycles to all girl students pursuing their studies in Class 10 in government and government-aided schools. Besides, it also declared to provide bicycles to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe boys of the same class in scheduled areas.
A decision to this effect was taken at a high-level meeting held at state secretariat under the chairmanship of chief minister Naveen Patnaik.
As per the decision, at least two lakh girl students will be provided bicycles in the next financial year.
In yet another decision, the meeting decided to provide uniforms to all students up to Class 8 in scheduled areas. This facility was previously given to girl students only.
Sources said the chief minister borrowed the idea of cycle distribution from Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar who in 2007 had announced a similar package to check the dropout rates among the girl children. The move is also seen a well-calculated exercise to salvage the seemingly sinking pride of the ruling BJD.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, chief minister Mr Patnaik said the state-owned Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC) would bear the expenditure to be incurred to implement the newly announced provisions from it periphery development fund. At least `70 crores is estimate to be spent to implement the programme.
The OMC would also build sports hostel for the tribal students, the meeting decided.
According to government sources, the incentives were announced to check the dropout rate in tribal dominated areas.
The chief minister was apprised that because of the successful interventions of the state government, the drop routes among the SC and ST students were respectively reduced from 37.7 per cent to 9.72 per cent and from 23.32 per cent to 6.96 per cent.
Reacting to the chief minister’s announcement, a senior Congress leader said: “ It’s a welcome move. But the government should have genuine interest to implement it sincerely. Many such populist measures have been declared in the past. But they have fallen flat because of non-seriousness.”
BJP state president Jual Oram said the announcement was a publicity student and lacked genuine concern for the poor students living in scheduled areas.