PM enquired about Kandhamal riot victims during Orissa visit

Date : 28th December 2009
Bhubaneswar: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh enquired from a Congress delegation about the situation in Kandhamal, the scene of last year's communal riots, during his brief visit to the state, surprising those who tried to raise issues like multi-crore mining scams and farmers' suicides.

"How is the ground situation in Kandhamal?” Singh asked the delegation, led by the leader of opposition Bhupinder Singh, Monday.

The Congress delegation, mostly comprising sitting MLAs of the Orissa Assembly, which tried to impress upon Singh on the multi-crore mining scam and a series of farmer suicide incidents in the state, were instead asked whether normalcy had completely returned in the district.

"Have all the people returned to their villages?” the PM asked, according to a member of the delegation.

Though there had been no violence in the district since last 15 months, all those who fled the region were yet to return to villages, they informed the PM adding, those remained in the district were still under apprehension of fresh violence.

"The sense of fear still continues among the people belonging to minority community," the delegation told the Prime Minister.

The riots had claimed at least 38 lives besides burning of hundreds of houses and churches in the aftermath of the VHP leader Swami Laxamanananda Saraswati last year.

Singh had earlier dubbed the incident as a "national shame".

During its about 20-minute meeting with the Prime Minister, the Congress delegation sought his intervention into the mining scam.

"We wanted the PM to do something so that the case would be probed by the CBI instead of the state vigilance", said an MLA.

The delegation which met Singh at Raj Bhavan here between his two programmes - inaugural function of Indian Economic Association and foundation stone laying ceremony of the new campus of the NISER, also drew the Prime Minister's attention to the distress sale of paddy in the state.

The delegation informed the PM about the plight of tribals, dalits and other backward class population in the state's KBK region besides drawing his attention to the increasing Maoist violence here.