Odisha Tourism Development Corporation (OTDC) has arrangements to provide air services to ministers, leaders and senior administrators at the facility. In this series, if any minister, leader and administrator travel by air on official business, they are ticketed by OTDC on departmental request. And the payment of this ticket is remitted to OTDC within 3 months by the concerned department. Otherwise the concerned department is notified and the money is charged. According to the information obtained from the RTI data, it has been found that 4 lakh 62 thousand 271 rupees have been outstanding for many years on the ministers and former ministers of some departments.
According to the information received from RTI sources on 2022 July 11, former Tourism, Language and Culture Minister Jyotiprakash Manigrahi has traveled 5 times between July 1, 2019 and September 19, 2021. He has 55 thousand 433 rupees left. Ashok Chandra Panda, former Minister of Science and Technology, Public Enterprises and Social Security and Empowerment of Disabled, traveled 12 times between September 15, 2015 and March 2, 2019. 1 lakh 30 thousand 8 rupees is left in his name. This minister was the former Minister of Culture and Tourism. Despite the fact that both are ministers in the service delivery department, the arrears cannot be collected, raising questions. Similarly, former Labor Minister Sushant Singh traveled 4 times between November 21 and 23, 2021, while Rs 85,974 was due in his name, while former Finance Minister Shashibhushan Behera owed Rs 69,851 between 2017 and 2019, and former School and Public Education Minister Badri Narayan Pare, who traveled once in 2018, owed Rs 39,724. , former minister Vikram Keshari Arukh traveled 2 times between 2019 and 21 and paid Rs 10,107, late minister Kalpatru Das traveled in his name in 2014 and paid Rs 27,361, minister Sameer Ranjan Das traveled twice in 2019 and paid Rs 13,656, minister Chandra Sarthi Behera paid once in 2018 and paid 16, 851 and Rs. 13, 306 Rs. Ranjan Kumar Mishra, Airline Services Manager of OTDC, asked about this, he said, after 3 months, the department is notified for the remaining amount. Almost collected. Sometimes there is a delay in collection during elections and sometimes when a minister’s department changes. However, in response to the question of how the airline is running now, Mishra said that it is running in profit.
