Bhubaneswar, Sep 25: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today refuted the allegations of excessive expenditure during the grievance hearing exercise in which the CM grievance cell toured the 30 districts of the state.

“As regards chopper use, I would like to clarify that it would have taken one and half years to do the same exercise by Road vis a vis by chopper. Every day conducting three to five meetings in different locations is humanly impossible within a window of 10 am to 3 pm which is convenient to people. In the last three and half years we have spent about Rupees 40 crores on chopper. On an average Rupees 1 to 1.5 crore is spent on chopper every month. In the past six months when chopper was used intensively to reach out to the people, the average expenditure was the same around Rupees 1 to 1.5 crore per month. It’s completely false and misleading to say that excess expenditure has been made,” said Patnaik while making reply in the Odisha Assembly on Monday.

The Cm further said that this mammoth exercise was carried out in more than 190 locations over a period of six months. “ Every day three to five venues were covered and in the process 57442 petitions were collected from the people, and as on date 43536 petitions have been resolved or disposed off. The entire exercise is transparent and technology driven. All the petitions and the 2 action taken reports and the stage of disposal are available in the janasunani portal. Legacy issues have been resolved in follow up meetings and within the next two to three months most of these historic issues pending for years together will be resolved,” added Patnaik.

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