Recent months have witnessed a sound growth and planning in the development of the Rayagada Municipality. As an Urban Level Body (ULB), it is a part of District Urban Development Agency (DUDA). Amrit Rituraj is the Project Director of DUDA.

The municipality council has been dissolved by the Government as its tenure was over. There is no chairperson and councilor to resolve on day-to-day issues of the town.

Instead, the present Collector Pramod Kumar Meherda as administrator alongwith Sachidananda Satpathy, Executive Officer, has made a team of officials accountable to redress grievance ward-wise. Behera, Rituraj and Satpathy trio has taken efforts to take the town to a greater height.

Because of several industries like Indian Metals and Ferro Alloys Limited (IMFA), JK Paper Mills Ltd (JKPM), Utkal Alumina International Limited (UAIL), Vedanta and their several ancillaries, the area has turned into a business hub. There are four engineering colleges namely GIACR, MITS, GIST and RITAM. Adding to this there are several ITIs, a Govt Polytechnic, few nursing schools apart from educational institutions of general nature.

The GOI’s recent announcement of putting a bottling plant and a Divisional Railway Manager’ s (DRM) office, the locality's development is expected to get a big push.

In the context of this, one can now behold the widened two ways NH-326 with LED street lights having underground wiring. A dozen of vehicles with segregated compartments for dry and wet wastes go around all the wards collecting wastes from individual houses and hundreds of dustbins of green(wet waste) and blue(dry waste) colours are kept at roadsides. In the main road, the commercial shops are provided with enough use and pay dustbins. The waste collection vehicles are fitted with loudspeakers to sensitize the inhabitants of the town to segregate the waste at source.

A solid waste management plant has been planned in a 12 acres plot at Antariguda village. Besides this, two micro composting centres will be set up near Jayaramaguda and Gurumguda villages as a part of the solid waste management design. The segregated plastics will be sold to local entrepreneurs and Toshali cement at Ampavalli, Pottangi, Koraput  to financially support the sanitary workers. 

The old drains of the  town have been renovated, desilted  and broadened to check overflow. A marketing complex at Kasturi Nagar is slowly getting occupied. Vending zones at different places with fabricated shops are provided to rehabilitate the street vendors. A Jatri Nivas within the compound of the new bus stand has been recently unveiled by Saraka.

Assistance for Individual Household Latrines(IHL) has been aggressively done to check open defecation. Community toilets at strategic points have been established to strengthen the process of ODF municipality.

Several parks are being maintained. In Gandhi Park, amusement for children and a gym for all are eye catchers. Greeneries at places like forest park, graveyards, avenues, etc are the joint effort of Municipality and Forest Department. On a regular basis it seizes polythenes from the unauthorized stockists and shopkeepers and levies fines.

PMAY(U) houses have been distributed in slums with a geo-tagging process. During the recent summer, safe drinking water contained in water pots were kept in each ward for the commuters. The digital face of the municipality is also encouraging. It has a Facebook page to exhibit transparency.

EO Satpathy, who joined the municipality six months back, is always online in his WhatsApp and responds to even trivial issues in his jurisdiction. It is thus no looking back for him.

A well planned new graveyard at Siriguda is under construction. Work for a mini stadium and a town hall beside the municipality office is progressing. There is a plan for yet another Kalyan Mandap at Sai Pria Nagar where Rajya Sabha MP Bhaskar Rao and SC-ST Minister Jagannath Saraka laid the foundation stone recently. The walls of the boundaries at main road, a part of NH-326, going through the town, are wall-painted aesthetically to beautify the city.

With the mediation of Collector Behera, a shopping complex under Gundicha temple with a lift for senior citizens and differentially abled persons to pay darshan to deity Lord Jagannath during Car festival has been agreed upon by the promoter.

Similarly work has started for a much awaited by-pass diverting from Siriguda village via CDMO’s office, OMC office, Sri Aurobindo Integrated School, GIACR, Sai International Hotel. This was a prime demand of local denizens.