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Following is an excerpt from a Hindu report.

Apollo will offer the services of Deccan Aviation’s helicopters at its centres in Bangalore, Delhi, Bhubaneswar and Kolkata, where it has either roof helipads or landing facilities.

Following are some excerpts from a Telegraph report. (Thanks to Deba Nayak for the pointer.)

“Having five players from Orissa in the national team, including the captain, is reason enough for us to celebrate. Our boys are not tired of the revelry yet,” said Amulya Nanda Bihari, the coach at the Rourkela sports hostel, today.

The boarders at Sundargarh and Cuttack, too, are celebrating the victory for the third consecutive day.

… Virtually one-third of the team being from Orissa, the state has emerged as a hockey powerhouse.

Hockey is less of a sport and more a way of life here, says Bihari, who has been a coach to Ignace Tirkey, William Tirkey and Prabodh Tirkey, the goal-keeper captain of the Indian team. He has witnessed the rise and fall and now the revival of the game since 1986, a year after the Rourkela hostel was set up.

Bihari, feted with the pretigious Biju Pattnaik Award for his contribution to hockey, pays a handsome tribute to the tribals’ natural flair for hockey. “Children in Sundargarh, Rourkela and Deogarh start playing at an early age — sometimes as early as five, and there never has been a dearth of talent. …

It is because tribals are so level-headed that makes them excel in defence, says Bihari.

Another coach, Milton Bilung endorses Bihari. “It’s an all-day and all-weather game for the tribals. Sometimes when tournaments are held, 200 teams participate and it becomes extremely difficult to manage.”

While Christian missionaries made the game popular, lure of government jobs is another reason for drawing the tribals. Almost all good players manage to get placement in Nalco, Railways and Orissa Police. Many lose interest in the game after grabbing the jobs, rued Bilung.

Currently, there are around 115 tribal players lodged in sports hostel such as those at Rourkela, Sundergarh and Cuttack.

Among these, Rajgangpur, Balishankara and Talsara in Sundergarh have produced the finest players so far.

Following is an excerpt on this from a New Indian Express report.

… Orissa is bracing up for a new addition to its tourism development initiatives.

It is set to launch home stay facilities for both foreign and domestic travellers in major tourist destinations across the State.

Further under the Bed and Breakfast Establishments scheme of Indiatourism, the home stays would first be introduced in Bhubaneswar and the most popular destinations of Puri and Konark.

Indiatourism aims at harnessing about 100 households, majority of them in Bhubaneswar, during the first year 2007- 08 to provide the facilities, which would be expanded to other parts.

The basic objective is to establish and consolidate a supplementary accommodation infrastructure ready to absorb increasing inflow while providing opportunities for the tourist to experience the life and customs of the region concerned, real and up close.

Around 40,000 foreign tourists visited Orissa last year and the inflow has shown a growth rate of over 10 percent annually. With the numbers rising the pressure on providing hotel accommodation has begun tightening and so alternative measures are explored.

… Delhi also joined the list recently and is aggressively marketing it in view of the Commonwealth Games 2010.Any house owner can become a home stay facility provider, if he meets the stipulations – that of providing a truly ethnic atmosphere to the guest while maintaining stringent quality standards.

Well-maintained house and guest rooms with comfortable bathrooms conforming to Western practices, clean and sanitised kitchens, living and dining rooms or spaces along with offering proper guest services are the prime requisites.

The house owner has to stay in the same house too. Interested households would be selected through an inspection and listed by Indiatourism and promote them internationally.

The housekeepers shall be provided training in guest and room services, housekeeping, sanitation, etc, free. The rental would be decided by the house owners themselves and they would keep all the earnings themselves.

The orissa.gov.in site has a page on PPP (private-public partnership) which contains the Orissa draft PPP policy and a list of projects in Orissa planned to be funded through PPP. Following are excerpts from a recent report in Telegraph.

The Orissa government is planning to invest Rs 125,000 crore in 36 infrastructure projects to be taken up under the private-public-partnership programme.

…Under the programme, the state government will leverage its financial resources with that of the Centre, to prepare a shelf of projects. These will be taken forward through a transparent selection process. There will also be viability gap funding, if the projects are initially loss-making.

The policy will also create Orissa Infrastructure Development Fund with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore. Projects that are part of the programme include roads, bridges, ports and harbours, airports, airstrips, inland container depots, industrial parks, special economic zones and townships.

“We have already entered into agreements with IL&FS and PricewaterhouseCoopers, who will be the consultants for these projects. A few more will be empanelled soon,” said Parag Gupta, special secretary of the state secretariat’s public-private-partnership cell. …

Sources said IL&FS was picked as a consultant because of its joint venture with state-run Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation for the Bhubaneswar Integrated Road Network project. PwC is also a consultant for several road projects. The state has also signed an agreement with the Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (IDFC) in this regard. IDFC is funding some projects in association with Nabard.

“Two more consultants, including Ernst and Young and another Calcutta-based firm, will be enrolled soon,” the sources said.

The empanelled agencies will help identify projects that need to be taken up, prepare pre-feasibility and detailed project reports. They will then hand the reports over to respective departments.

Some of the projects being taken up are the Capital Region Ring Road, to span 98km, and the Bhubaneswar-Paradip Road, a 90km stretch. Each of the projects will cost around Rs 700 crore. They will be executed by the state public works department.

Other projects include sector-specific infotech SEZs, which will cost around Rs 352 crore and an IT & corporate tower in Bhubaneswar to be set up for Rs 146 crore.

Following is an excerpt from a report on this.

The UK-based Dawnay Day Group plans to invest $1.2 billion to set up four-star properties in the country over the next 10 years.

It has already committed $200 million in the Indian hospitality market. …

Mandeep Lamba, managing director, Dawnay Day Hotels India, told DNA Money that an initial public offer (IPO) over the next 4-5 years could not be ruled out either.

The current commitment of $200 million is being funded through internal accruals. Already, land has been acquired in Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Prospective properties are likely to come up in Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Mumbai and Kolkata.

Following is an excerpt from a report in Telegraph.

… Forum Projects, which now has a land bank worth over Rs 3,500 crore, is also investing big beyond Bengal. …

A mixed-use city-centre development in Adityapur across 22.5 acres with hospitals, club, cineplex, retail, residential and conferencing facilities, and a 550,000-sq ft lifestyle mall in Bhubaneswar with 1,200 car parks are the other large-format projects on the group’s 5.5 million-sq ft retail roadmap.

Following are excerpts from a Hindu report. (Thanks to R. P. Tripathy for the pointer.)

Lack of proper road communication is a major hindrance in the path of construction and renovation works being taken up by the Gopalpur Ports Limited (GPL) to transform the existing seasonal port into a mega all weather port.

Speaking to The Hindu, director of the GPL, Mahima Mishra said the existing road that connects NH 5 with the port was too narrow and was not of standard to bear the load of transportation of heavy machines and vehicles needed for th e work of the port. The GPL wants to construct a separate four lane road to connect the NH 5 with the port. But this road project of GPL has been getting delayed as the proposed land is under the Orissa Sands Complex (OSCOM), a unit of the Indian Rare Earths’ Limited (IREL). Mr Mishra said delay in construction of this road could delay the whole port project. He said road transport between the port and the highway can also affect the operation of the seasonal port at Gopalpur from November.

… State Transport Secretary, Priyabrata Patnaik has held discussions with the district administration and GPL authorities regarding the transfer of land to the GPL for its port project. Chatrapur sub-collector Ajit Mishra said efforts were being made for speedy transfer of 269 acres now under the IREL to the GPL. Transfer of these 269 acres would enable the GPL construct its four lane road between NH 5 and the port for proper transportation link.

 

… Tehsildar of Chatrapur Manoj Padhi informed that the IREL had agreed to surrender 269 acres to the State Revenue Department as it has completed mining at the area. About 140 acres of this land was government land and the rest 129 acres was private land acquired by IREL for mining.

After IREL surrenders the land acquisition process would again have to be initiated for the private land so that it could get transferred to GPL as early as possible. In total the GPL needs around 2000 acres for its project.

… The whole project involves an investment of over Rs. 1700 crores. The GPL happens to be a consortium of Orissa Stevedores Ltd. (OSL), Noble Group Ltd. of Hong Kong and Sara International Ltd., which entered into an MOU with the Orissa Government on Sept 14 last year to take over the Gopalpur port to develop it into a major all weather port on BOOST basis.

Following is a bit of information on Sky Airways:

• A report in Telegraph mentions the following:

… Sky Airways (backed by the M.L. Agarwal group, with business interests in Orissa�s mining and steel sectors) …

Following is an excerpt from a Reuters report.

Officials in Orissa said on Thursday they had earmarked 7,000 acres of government and private land for a steel project proposed by Arcelor Mittal.

Last December, Arcelor Mittal, the world’s biggest steel maker, signed a multi-billion deal with the state government to build the 12 million tonne plant, and is also planning a similar sized steel unit in Jharkhand.

“We have cleared 7,000 acres of land for the steel project and captive power plant so that they can start work (aquiring land),” Orissa’s Industry Secretary Ashok Dalwai told Reuters.

He said most of the land was owned by the state but Arcelor Mittal would have to purchase some from farmers, a potentially controversial process the Orissa government would facilitate.

Hundreds of families are living on the state-owned land and would have to be moved.

The company still has to tie up a mining lease.

… The Arcelor Mittal project also includes a 750 MW power plant. The company had asked for 1,000 acres (400 hectares) on which to build homes for workers, in addition to 7,000 acres for the steel plant itself.

Supporters say the project would provide jobs for 5,500 people directly and another 15,000 indirectly.

In July, Arcelor Mittal Chief Executive Lakshmi Mittal had said that a detailed project report would be ready by mid-2008 and the first phase of the plant would be commissioned within four years of the report’s completion.

State officials said on Thursday the project would only get formal clearance once that report had been submitted.

Following are excerpts from a sify.com report.

State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) is setting up an oil refinery-cum-petrochemical complex at Paradip in Orissa, with an installed capacity of 15 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTPA) at an estimated cost of Rs 25,646 crore.

”The project is expected to be completed by October 2011,” Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dinsha Patel said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

He said the land acquisition was carried out by Orissa Government by consent agreement under section 11(2) of the Land Acquisition Act, based on the compensation package for private land fixed by Orissa Government in October, 1999.

IOC has already acquired 3,347 acres of land for Paradip Refinery Project.

The progress made on the various phases of the project includes the construction of bridges over Santra Creek, approach road including railway over-bridge for the refinery connecting NH-5A to refinery site have been completed.

Tecnological selection for all major units has been completed.

Residential accommodation for construction phase, CISF colony, coastal approach road and green belt development are under various stages of construction.

Project Management Consultant (PMC) has been selected for Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) phase of the project on December 1, 2006.

Patel said the environmental clearance for the project has been received on July 6, 2007.

He added an amount of Rs 2281.87 crore has been sanctioned for Paradip Refinery project for carrying out pre-project activities, out of which, Rs 778.32 crore has been spent as on July 31, this year.

Following is an excerpt from a Pragativadi report.

The state government has decided to set up seven seeds centre in the state to enable the farmers to avail quality seeds without further delay.

According to official sources, the centres would come up at Ganjam, Angul, Sundargarh, Kalahandi, Balasore Jajpur and Bhubaneswar.

With this, the total seed centres in the state would go up to nine with two such centres that have been already set up at Rayagada and Bargarh.

The two centres provide certificates on the certified seeds to the farmers.
Apart from this, another centre functioning at Bhubaneswar has been entrusted with checking the quality of seeds.

The state government has also decided to impart training to the farmers about the use of modern cultivation for which it is now contemplating on roping in the National Farmer Extension Management Organisations.

Their web site is www.oredaorissa.com.

Following is a big excerpt from Pioneer on this. (The detailed route and the various proposed stations can be found in this map.)

The inordinate delay in the construction of the Khurda – Balangir railway line has triggered severe public resentment, with people blaming the Centre for, deliberately, deferring the project.

Paucity of funds and delay in land acquisition are said to be the main factors that mar the speedy implementation of the project.

The 339 km long Khurda – Balangir railway line was sanctioned in 1994-95 and had raised the hopes of the people living in this perennially backward and neglected district. The line, which was supposed to run through Nayagarh, Phulbani, Boudh and Sonepur was expected to provide an impetus to the growth of the district.

The estimated cost of the project was Rs 354 crore initially but now the cost has escalated to Rs700 crore. As many as 17 railway stations, 441 bridges, 11 tunnels and 126 level-crossings were to be constructed as part of the project.

The Railway Ministry made a budgetary allocation of Rs15.38 crore in 2004-05 for the project and has this year earmarked Rs 10 crore, following which work on a 22-km stretch from Khurda was undertaken.

But no public representative of the area is happy with the pace of the project. Phulbani MP Sugriba Singh had also raised the issue in the Parliament sometime ago. Singh had also written a letter to Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, alleging that even one-tenth of the project’s total budget had not been released so far.

From Arcelor-Mittal’s actions I get the feeling that they are trying to bully the Orissa government. In comparison, Vedanta has been accommodative in its land requirements for the university. But may be the bullying strategy would work for them. However, they got to be careful; if local people get more mad, and the government gets fed up with their bullying then the whole thing may fall apart.