Niranjan visits fire ravaged village, demands compensation to victims

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, April 26:

Former PCC chief and senior Congress leader Niranjan Patnaik today urged the district administration and Panchayati Raj secretary to provide houses under Mo Kodia and Indira Awas schemes to 34 families, whose houses were completely gutted following a major fire that broke out in Narasinghpur village under Banta police station in Odisha’s Bhadrak district on April 24.

The Congress leader visited the village today along with a number of senior party colleagues for an on-the-spot assessment of the losses and review the measures taken by administration to assist the affected families. He alsi met with the members of affected families and expressed his sympathies.

He also demanded the setting up of a fire station in the Banta block which had witnessed another major fire last year that had rendered 200 families homeless. He said such calamities could have been tackled faster and better, had there been a fire station in the vicinity.

He expressed dissatisfaction over the inability of the district administration to provide houses under the Mo Kudia scheme to 200 families whose homes were gutted last year.

Patnaik was accompanied by former MP Anant Charan Sethy,senior Congress leader Prithviraj Das,former MLA Panchanan Mandal, former block chairman Harmohan Behera and block Congress president Laxmidhar Sahu and a number of local Congress workers.

It may be noted here that thatched houses with as many as 123 rooms were reduced to ashes in the major fire that broke out in Narasinghpur following a short circuit on Thursday.