Caught In a fix as it might require taking action against some of his own party leaders, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik seems to be dragging his feet over the implementation of task force report on multiple allotment of houses and plots under the controversial discretionary quota.
Though more than 9 months have passed since the state Cabinet accepted the recommendations of the task force headed by senior IAS officer Taradatt on the issue, the government is yet to finalise the guidelines for cancellation of multiple plots or houses allotted to same persons of a family, some of them hailing from the ruling Biju Janata Dal.
However, agencies such as Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), Cuttack Development Authority (CDA) and Odisha State Housing Board (OSHB) which made the allotments remain unclear about how to initiate action against the violators.
"So far we have only sent show cause notices to around Fifty alleged violators but are unable to take further action because the government is yet to issue clear cut guidelines," said a senior BDA official. He added that officials of the housing and urban development department have communicated to them that the allotting agencies were required to take their own decision in the matter.
But that is easier said than done because of the profile of some of the alleged violators. Sources said while one of them, the ruling party MLA from Dharmshala, Pranab Kumar Balbantray, son of former Rajya Sabha member, Kalptaru Das, had, in the meanwhile, returned the flat allotted to him under discretionary quota, the issue of whether to take legal action against him or not was yet to be decided.
The task force that was constituted following a public uproar over revelations of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) about large-scale irregularities under the discretionary quota allotments had found 54 cases of multiple allotments that were in complete violation of norms, with the BDA and CDA accounting for 40 of these allotments.
