The Biju Janata Dal’s election promise of free power to 90% households in Odisha has a sound financial reasoning backing it, with provisions made for it in the State budget, party leader and 5T chairman V.K. Pandian said on Friday. Speaking exclusively to The Hindu, he said that what had shocked him was the BJP’s poll promise of a ₹50,000 “voucher” for two crore women in the State.
“The Odisha government has the financial cushion to promise free power. For me, it’s shocking the way the BJP has promised freebies, despite declaring they are against freebie culture,” he said. “They have announced a funny scheme for Odisha in their manifesto, that they will come up with a ₹50,000 ‘voucher’ for two crore women. First of all, what is a voucher? We are not running a shopping mall. Plus, the outlay for this would be ₹1 lakh crore when your total budget is ₹2 lakh crore! It’s a mockery of developmental economics. The BJP’s plans will push back Odisha by 25 years,” he added.
Being a revenue surplus State, Odisha could afford the free electricity promise made by the BJD, Mr. Pandian said. “Looking at our revenue surplus of ₹25,000 crore, Odisha being one of the few States with a revenue surplus, we will take a hit of only ₹2,000 crore on this scheme. To look at it in another way, our target is to make Odisha’s per capita income the highest in the country. The way to do it is to cut down the costs to individual households. Chief Minister [Naveen] Patnaik has already done that via free health coverage, free education, and power is the next thing,” he said.
