With Cyclone Arnab battering Odisha's coast, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi pulled together a high-level review meeting at the Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) office on Wednesday, 28 October 2026 — taking direct stock of damage, ongoing rescue operations, and relief distribution while issuing blunt orders: restore power, drinking water, and connectivity to affected areas without delay.

What the SRC meeting room looked like in real terms

The Chief Minister's Office confirmed that CM Majhi chaired the high-level review covering the full breadth of Cyclone Arnab's impact — status of the storm, extent of damage, live rescue operations, and the mechanics of relief distribution. Officials from multiple departments were present, and the language from the CMO was unambiguous: coordinate or be held accountable.

Majhi directed that ODRAF (Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force), NDRF (National Disaster Response Force), and the state fire services be kept on purna sajaga — full alert — with no stand-down until the situation normalises. He also demanded 'war-footing' inter-departmental coordination, a phrase that signals the administration is treating restoration as a time-critical emergency, not a routine post-storm exercise.

Why Odisha runs its cyclone machine differently

The state's institutional muscle on cyclone response was forged in tragedy. The 1999 super cyclone killed over 10,000 people, exposing catastrophic gaps in early warning, evacuation, and relief delivery. What followed was two decades of deliberate institutional investment — the creation of ODRAF, pre-positioned relief stockpiles, hardened communication infrastructure, and a Special Relief Commissioner framework built specifically to coordinate across agencies without bureaucratic lag.

The payoff was visible during Cyclone Fani in 2019, when authorities evacuated roughly 1.2 million people in under 48 hours, limiting fatalities despite the storm's Category 4-equivalent intensity. That operational template — rapid evacuation, multi-force deployment, and immediate restoration of essential services — is precisely what CM Majhi invoked on Wednesday.

Restoration of essentials: the first 72-hour test

CM Majhi specifically flagged three restoration priorities: electricity supply, drinking water, and communication links. These are not incidental amenities — in a post-cyclone environment, each directly determines survival. Power outages disable water pumps. Broken communication lines cut off remote coastal communities from emergency services. Contaminated water sources trigger secondary health crises that can outlast the storm by weeks.

By naming these three explicitly in his directives, the CM is signalling to department heads that these are measurable, time-bound deliverables — not aspirational targets. Affected districts along Odisha's Bay of Bengal coastline will be watching how fast those metrics move.

Odisha has learned, the hardest way possible, that a cyclone's death toll is only partly determined by the storm itself. The rest is decided in the 72 hours that follow — and Wednesday's review meeting is the state betting it has learned that lesson well enough to prove it again.