Odisha seeks infrastructure development in Maoists affected areas

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Thursday requested the union government to augment infrastructure facilities in the Maoist-affected districts of the state.

“We demanded an increase in the bandwidth of 257 existing mobile towers from 512 KBPS to 1 MBPS. Besides, we requested for approval of the proposal given to the Centre for setting up of 518 new mobile towers in the LWE areas,” said Home secretary Asit Tripathy.

The state government put forth its demand before the Union Cabinet secretary during a discussion over video conferencing on Thursday.

Tripathy said banking penetration in the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) areas is very less.

“Since about 70 percent of the population in the LWE areas are deprived of banking facilities, we requested the center to take necessary steps to provide banking facilities in the areas,” he added.

He also said the request was also made to expedite Malkangiri-Jeypore-Nabarangpur rail project.

The Home secretary said the state government expressed concern over the inordinate delay in the sanction of the central fund for the Gurupriya bridge construction, which is under construction in the cut-off areas in Chitrakonda block in Malkangiri district.

Director General of Police, KB Singh said Odisha Police will discuss with Andhra Pradesh Police to launch a joint operation against the Maoists very soon.

He said for effect operation against the Maoists, Odisha Police would formulate new strategies to counter their threats.