Sop story Chief minister Naveen Patnaik seems to be in poll mode already though the civic body elections are next year. Last week,he announced free uniforms to all tribal and Dalit students of classes IX and X studying in schools run by the ST/SC development department. The government has already been distributing free uniforms to all girl students and boys of SC/ST and BPL families up to Class VIII. The free uniform scheme comes about a fortnight after he announced free bicycles to all BPL Class X students in the state. Ahead of the panchayat polls this year,Naveen in October 2011 had introduced free bicycles for each girl in Class X in government and government-aided schools. The BJD swept the panchayat polls. Secys in the dock Two senior IAS officers,rural development secretary S N Tripathy and women and child development secretary Arti Ahuja,had to appear personally before the Orissa High Court with an unconditional apology in a contempt case. The two secretaries earned the courts wrath for non-compliance of an order on providing drinking water to anganwadi centres across the state. Last month,law secretary Debabrata Dash got a dressing-down from Supreme Court judges T S Thakur and Gyan Sudha Mishra. Orissa has not had a standing counsel in the SC in 12 cases and the judges asked Dash to appear personally. Tourism breather Three months after two Italian tourists were abducted by Maoists,which led to a ban on foreign tourists from visiting Orissas tribal areas,the government is thinking about relaxing it. Tourism Minister Maheswar Mohanty met tour and travel operators and assured them he would urge the chief minister to relax restrictions on the visit of foreign tourists to tribal pockets. After the abduction of Italian Paulo Bosusco and Cludio Colangelo from the jungles of Kandhamal,the state had imposed the ban for an indefinite period. The tourism industry in Koraput,Kandhamal and Rayagada was badly hit. Child marriage Abut 6.5 per cent of rural girls in Orissa and 3.2 per cent in urban areas got married before the age of 18 in 2007-08,says the annual health survey conducted by the Registrar General of India. Bishnupada Sethi,director of census in Orissa,said the survey found that 0.5 per cent of girls in coastal Jagatsinghpur,and 24.7 per cent in the tribal-dominated Nabarangpur district,got married below 18 during 2007-2008. Otherwise,the mean age at marriage of women and girls varied from 19.8 in Nabarangpur district to 24 in Jagatsinghpur district.
