Odisha largely free from caste, religion resonance in electoral politics
Caste calculation, religious affiliation has never emerged as a tool to woo voters.
An Inter- Ministerial Central team is in Odisha to assess the damage caused by cyclone Bulbul. The seven-member team will visit Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara and Balasore districts to evaluate the extent of damage and submit a report to the Centre, officials said.
The team is led by Saheli Ghosh Roy, Joint Secretary (CIC), Ministry of Home Affairs. Soon after arriving at Bhubaneswar on Thurdsday, the team visited some of the affected areas at Chandbali in Bhadrak district.
Besides Roy, the other team members are Chief Engineer in Ministry of Power Vandana Singhal, consultant in Department of Expenditure Deena Nath, Deputy Secretary in Ministry of Rural Development SS Modi, Superintending Engineer of Central Warehousing Corporation, Odisha, Amarish Pal Singh.
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The officials said that the team will split into two groups today and make field visits to the affected blocks.
Group A will conduct a field trip to Chandbali and Basudevpur blocks in Bhadrak district and Bhograi block in Balasore district while the Group B will visit Rajnagar block in Kendrapara district and Kujang and Ersama blocks of Jagatsinghpur district.
Both the groups will return to the state capital on Friday evening and attend a wrap-up meeting, to be chaired by Chief Secretary A K Tripathy.
Though the cyclone skipped Odisha and made landfall between West Bengal and Bangladesh coasts on Saturday, heavy downpour and gale-force winds left a trail of destruction, damaging hundreds of houses, uprooting trees, electric poles and affecting telecom towers in the state.
Preliminary report prepared by the state government said that the cyclone had caused damage to crops in three lakh hectares, which includes more than 33 per cent crop damage in over 2 lakh hectares land.
Around 5,500 houses were damaged,16 lakh electric consumers were affected and 653 piped water supply systems suffered break down due disruption in power supply.
According to the officials, the state government is likely to submit a preliminary damage assessment report to the team.
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