Will hold meeting with Andhra CM to resolve Polavaram issue: Majhi

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi Monday said he will hold a meeting with his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu to resolve the Polavaram issue between the two states.

Majhi, upon his arrival from Delhi after attending the Governing Council meeting of the NITI Aayog on July 27, said he had a discussion with Naidu on the Polavaram issue and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the potato crisis in Odisha.

"I held a discussion with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on the Polavaram issue. During the meeting, I placed Odisha's demands. I also proposed a chief ministerial level meeting to resolve the issue, which he accepted," Majhi told reporters at Bhubaneswar airport.

Odisha is opposed to the Polavaram project as it fears that large tracts of land and some villages in Malkangiri district would be inundated if the project is implemented in its present form.

The Centre, in its annual budget, has promised all support for completion of the Polavaram multi-purpose project.

The issue was also raised in the assembly with Congress and BJD members protesting the BJP-led central government's support to Andhra Pradesh to complete the Polavaram project.

Leader of Opposition and former chief minister Naveen Patnaik, in a statement on July 23, had said, "We have been fighting for justice on the Polavaram issue. Allocating more funds for Polavaram without sorting out genuine grievances of Odisha shows impartiality towards Odisha." During Patnaik's BJD rule, the state government had shot off several letters to the Centre demanding that the problems faced by the people of Odisha because of the Polavaram project be resolved.

However, Majhi said he does not believe that the issues could be sorted out by just writing letters.

Majhi also said that he met Banerjee and spoke to her in the presence of chief secretaries of both the states to resolve the crisis created due to the discontinuation of tuber supply to Odisha.