No road connectivity to 1,242 villages in state: Min

Bhubaneswar: There is no road connectivity in 1,242 villages in the state, panchayati raj and drinking water minister Pratap Jena said in the assembly here on Tuesday.
Though the state government claims to have built several roads in rural areas, the data shows that hundreds of villages do not have connectivity with major connecting roads. As a result, ambulances cannot reach the villages on time.
Rayagada district has topped the list of unconnected villages with 181 followed by Jagatsinghpur with 179, Malkangiri with 150, Mayurbhanj with 100 and Koraput with 95 villages. As many as 24 of the 30 districts in the state have unconnected villages.
A senior official of the panchayati raj and drinking water department said the districts with hilly terrains, rivers and rivulets have these unconnected villages. Several villages coming under Left-wing extremism (LWE) areas do not have road connectivity, he added.
Pradipta Nayak, a human rights activist, criticized the state government for not connecting the villages with roads after 73 years of independence. “I think more than 1,242 villages need road connectivity. Without road communication, how can the people live there? Several tribal hamlets in the state are yet to get a road,” he added.
Koraput Congress MP Saptagiri Ulaka raised suspicion over the data. “Not sure about these numbers. As per my reports, we have around 1,500 villages in Rayagada and Koraput districts that are not connected by road,” he added.
Jena said the state government will take appropriate steps to connect these villages with roads in a phased manner. While presenting the annual budget on Tuesday, state finance minister Niranjan Pujari said the government will construct roads to connect these villages. In order to provide road connectivity to 142 remotest and inaccessible villages of 17 Left-wing extremist (LWE) affected districts, about Rs 71 crore is proposed to be provided under the scheme connecting the unconnected villages, Pujari said.