BHUBANESWAR: Finance Minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadei on Monday said the departments have been asked to examine the recommendations of the expert committee on revenue enhancing measures and prepare a time-bound action plan for their implementation.To a question from Amar Prasad Satpathy (NCP), Ghadei said the committee had given several recommendations on how to increase the revenue of the State. One of the key recommendations is that the mines should not be leased out to private parties. There should not be privatisation of the mining sector and companies which have signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) for establishment of industries should also be asked to purchase raw materials from the Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC).The committee has recommended that irrigation and industrial water rate should be increased in Orissa. Neighbouring states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal have a base rate ` 28 higher than Orissa, it said.The panel has observed that water retention of irrigation projects is gradually depleting due to siltation and sedimentation and the reservoir bed is also going up. Such irrigation projects were designed mostly to meet the irrigation needs of the farmers in the command area of the project, drinking water requirement, generation of electricity and fishery, it said.But now major industries and independent power plants (IPPs) have come up as the main competitors for water use from these projects, it said and added that in years of scanty rainfall, the reservoir level goes down so much so that there is inadequate flow in the canal system for irrigation. The expert committee recommended that in addition to scaling down allocation to industries, in such years of scarcity, the levy water rate for the industrial and commercial use should be doubled.
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