Sammilani meets J’suguda border villagers

A seven-member team of the Utkal Sammilani central committee led by general secretary Dr Radhanath Praharaj on April 15 met the anguished people of 19 villages under Lakhanpur block of Jharsuguda district who are on the border between Odiaha and Chhattisgarh and heard their problems.  

These villagers under the banner of Jana Jagruti Committee had protested the apathy of the Odisha Government by wearing black badges on April 1 on the Utkal Divas.

The team visited various areas, including the proposed water supply project at Mahulpali, a Primary Health Centre at Chantipalli where there was no doctor, etc, and took stock of several problems of the locality.

 At a meeting at Semelapya, the villagers raised their demands including construction of an annicut on the Hirakud upstream for conservation of water for irrigation, establishment of a college and a tribal residential school, Government bus service from the district headquarters to the villages, filling the vacant doctor post in the PHC, sorting out the low voltage problem in the area, besides asking a plant in Chhattisgarh near the villages to carry out developmental works and take measures to tackle pollution under its CSR programme and establishment of cold storage. The team assured the villagers of bringing the demands to the notice of the State Government and urged them to refrain from the plan to merge with Chhatisgarh. Those in the team were Bharat Chandra Jena, Trinath Samantray, Satyajit Nayak, Jitendra Kumar Padhi, besides two engineers.