Bhubaneswar: The Odisha State Cabinet held under the chairmanship of chief minister Naveen Patnaik Friday took fourteen important decisions pertaining to the departments of social security and empowerment of persons with disabilities, water resources, transport, fisheries and animal resource development, general administration , higher education, law, planning & convergence, revenue & disaster management, steel & mines.
Informing about decisions of the Cabinet, chief secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra said that major decisions of Cabinet included the approval for promotion of the use of electric vehicles in the State through different kinds of incentives; and, Odisha Sand Policy-2021 for ensuring adequate supply of sand for developmental projects and construction works. The objective of the sand policy is to prevent the scope for illegal mining of sand. In another relief to the employees in private educational institutions, Cabinet today decided that the Principals of the private educational institutions who were declared as drawing and disbursing officers (DDOs) would be the provisional pension sanctioning authority for the employees other than himself/herself. The provisional pensions of the principals would be sanctioned by the concerned regional directors. The agenda bid for construction of thick plastic concrete cut-off wall at the heel of the left side earth dam of Kanpur irrigation project in Keonjhar district was also approved in the meeting. The work would be completed in eleven months.