Bhubaneswar: Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who passed away this evening has played a vital role in the development of Odisha.
Below are some of Vajpayee’s contributions for which the people of Odisha will never forget him.
- Atal Bihari Vajpayee had visited Odisha during the super cyclone in 1999. As a Prime Minister he came here to take stock of the situation on November 5, 1999 and moved by the suffering of people, announced a package of Rs 250 crore.
- He had laid foundation stone for the Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) in Pardip on May 25, 2000.
- He also had laid foundation stone for AIIMS-Bhubaneswar on July 15, 2002.
- It is said to have played a major role in the formation of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) as advisor.
- He also had made Naveen Patnaik a Minister in his cabinet, during which he is said to have groomed Patnaik as a politician. When NDA was in power, Vajpayee had assigned several key portfolios of Ministers to other politicians from Odisha like Jual Oram, Dilip Ray, Arjun Sethi, Braja Kishore Tripathy, Devendra Pradhan.