BHUBANESWAR: In what can be seen as a missive to embarrass Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on the tribal issue, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday alleged that a large number of ‘adivasis’ are in jail in Odisha, for no reason whatsoever, and they should be freed at the earliest.

The Naxalites are expanding their tentacles into the tiger territory. Thirty per cent of India’s tiger reserves are already under their control.

Indian forest officials, from the states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, present at the Global Tiger Recovery Programme (GTRP), complained of increasing Naxal infiltration in India’s heartland. The tiger reserves comprising Valmiki in Bihar, Palamau in Jharkhand, Indravati in Chhattisgarh, Buxa in West Bengal and Simplipal in Orissa are some of the reserves bearing the brunt of the Naxal menace.

The Centre on Thursday cleared a Rs 8500-crore project under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana to connect 6000 habitations in the 78 naxalite-affected districts of nine states.

The Union Cabinet cleared the project, under which the money will be utilised for new connectivity and upgradation of these habitations, which will be an addition to the core network, approved in 2002 by the Union Ministry of Rural Development.

The Centre will be providing separate funds under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY) for enhancing road connectivity in the six border districts of Punjab. The proposed move would benefit Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Ferozepur, Fazilka, Taran Taran and Pathankot, according to Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh.

Also, the condition of minimum inhabitation of 500 persons for providing road connectivity under PMGSY would be relaxed to 250 persons in the case of border districts on the lines of tribal and naxal areas, he said on Saturday.

A day after Maoists killed six CISF personnel and a driver inside the biggest iron ore mining facility in the country, the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) complex here remained unguarded. Locals dropped in, “examined” the damaged Bolero, went through belongings of the deceased, noted the bullet marks and clicked photographs and made video films, even picking up the occasional empty shells.

The Union rural development ministry is setting up a body called “Bharat Rural Livelihood Foundation’ (BRLF) with a `1,000-crore corpus with the help of India Inc, to promote economic and social empowerment in 170 districts, including those affected by Naxal violence.

“I have already written to the Tatas, Reliance, Infosys, and Wipro, apart from the dairy cooperative NDDB, and Nabard, to be the founding members of BRLF. My ministry is giving initial corpus of `500 crore,” Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said here on Sunday.