Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Meets Prime Minister Narendra Modi Monday June 02,2014

Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik today Monday June 02,2014 met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and demanded  ''Special Category Status'' for Odisha

Accompanied by all 24 MPs belonging to his party, the Biju Janata Dal, or the BJD, Naveen Patnaik(67) met the Prime Minister for the first time after the regime change at the Centre.

The BJD won 20 of the 21 seats from Odisha in the Lok Sabha polls. It has another4 members in the Rajya Sabha

Naveen Patnaik asked the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to grant the special category status to Odisha.
The Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's other demands include -

•  revision of mining royalty rates
•  the allocation of Rs. 3,160 crore in the railway budget
•  better port connectivity, recognising the genuine concerns of districts which are affected by floods and a hold on the Polavaram irrigation project

Naveen Patnaik, who was last month sworn in as the chief minister of Odisha for the fourth consecutive term, has been exerting pressure on the Centre to accede to his demand for including Odisha in the category of special category states

Odisha having a very high concentration of scheduled tribes and scheduled caste communities, adverse human development indicators and high incidence of poverty needs to be declared as a special category state," Naveen Patnaik said is his letter written to the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh in 2011