With a potential cyclone bearing down on Odisha's southern coast, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi chaired a high-level emergency review at Lok Seva Bhavan, Bhubaneswar, on Saturday, October 24, 2026 — issuing a sweeping set of directives to put the state on full war footing before landfall.

Schools shut, five districts on high alert

The most immediate impact for ordinary Odhias: all schools, colleges, and anganwadi centres in Ganjam, Gajapati, Rayagada, Koraput, and Malkangiri districts will remain closed on October 28 and 29. These five southern districts sit squarely in the Bay of Bengal's cyclone corridor — Ganjam alone has faced the brunt of multiple major storms over the past two decades. For the remaining districts, the Chief Minister's Office directed respective District Collectors to assess local conditions and announce institutional closures at their discretion.

302 rescue teams and a medical supply chain built for the worst

The state has pre-positioned 302 rescue and relief teams across vulnerable zones — a number that reflects the scale of the threat being anticipated. Authorities have been ordered to begin evacuating residents from low-lying areas to designated safe shelters immediately, without waiting for conditions to deteriorate. Pregnant women and patients are to be transferred to health facilities as a priority.

Health centres in potentially affected areas have been specifically directed to stock anti-snake venom injections, essential medicines, and medical kits — a detail that signals how granular Odisha's cyclone playbook has become. Flooding routinely drives snakes into human habitation, making anti-venom a frontline necessity in post-cyclone medical response.

Odisha's 'Whole of Government' model kicks in

CM Majhi explicitly invoked a 'Whole of Government Approach' — directing every engineering department to remain on standby for rapid road clearance, restoration of electricity supply, and resumption of drinking water services the moment the storm passes. The instruction to treat post-cyclone recovery on a 'yuddhakaalin bhitti' (war footing) basis underscores the urgency.

Odisha's institutional muscle for exactly this moment was built the hard way. After the catastrophic 1999 Super Cyclone, the state established the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) — one of India's first dedicated state-level disaster bodies. Annual cyclone-season reviews, pre-positioned teams, and inter-department coordination protocols have since become a template other Indian coastal states have sought to replicate. The five districts named in Monday's closure order have featured in virtually every cyclone-response activation since then.

Farmers in the region face a particularly acute risk: late-October coincides with the kharif harvest window, and crop damage from a cyclone at this stage can be devastating. The Chief Minister's directive specifically called for crop protection measures to be integrated into the recovery plan from day one.

As the India Meteorological Department tracks the developing system and District Collectors sharpen their local orders, Odisha is not waiting to react — it is already moving.