Bhubaneswar: The Mohan Majhi government has constituted a three-member committee to look into the various aspects of StartUp Odisha.
Headed by headed by Director of Industries, the panel comprises the Additional Secretary/Joint Secretary, Finance Department and Additional Secretary/Joint Secretary, Public Enterprises Department, an official notification issued by the MSME Department said.
The committee will examine the financial grant of startups within and outside the state, fund distribution/grant to different private institutions stating them as incubators, output of project management consultants, contribution of NPS and EPF of project officials and use of office space by MNCs.
The committee has been asked to submit the report by August 21. In July, the government restricted the financial powers of the Startup Odisha authorities after MSME Minister Gokulananda Mallik visited O-Hub, the state’s maiden centralised incubation centre, amid allegations of irregularities and negligence.
Following this, there was a cap of Rs 1 crore and Rs 10 crore on the financial power of the executive chairman and board of directors respectively. “The department, which is a 100 per cent shareholder of Startup Odisha, however, has the full power for sanctioning and incurring expenditure of any type, including schematic, non-schematic, recurring, non-recurring, revenue and capital,” the notification said.
Startup Odisha was launched in 2016 by the then-Naveen Patnaik-led BJD government to support 5,000 startups in the state by 2025.
