Modi’s Government banned use of red beacon as an act against “VIP culture”. The State Governments were given the freedom to take their own decisions.
Within a couple of hours of the news, without the decision being formally intimated to the Odisha Government, Naveen Patnaik in a theatrical swiftness removed the red light on his vehicle. And the picture of the car without the beacon appeared in the media to show that Patnaik was the first CM to follow the “good” move by the Central Government!
Soon, however, BJD MP Tathagata Satpathy, a new ‘Twitting’ master politician, described the Modi Government’s act as a “joke”. He was conveniently, and understandably, silent on why his boss so swiftly believed in and acted upon the “joke”.
“All-knowing”, “all-wise” and “all-virtuous” septuagenarian BJD leader and Minister Damodar Rout joined Satpathy by terming the Union Cabinet’s red beacon ban decision as one aimed at gaining “cheap popularity”. He too, for obvious reason, refrained from commenting on Naveen Patnaik’s hurry in respecting the Modi “joke”.
Tathagata Satpathy, more known as a media house owner than a politician of substance unlike his late lamented mother Nandini Satpathy, in a one-upmanship fashion suggested that Modi better withdraw the security cover for Ministers if he really wants an end to the VIP culture.
Satpathy’s advice immediately appealed to Naveen Patnaik, who dittoed it as if to make veiled amends to his earlier rush to be the first Modi “joke” partner.
But how to ensure safety for VIPs without the present security cover is not suggested by Satpathy and his master. Satpathy might be a “useful” consultant to Patnaik in such an exercise as many have forgotten that the MP had launched a security outfit, Tahahgata Intelligence and Security Agency (TISA), with the help of the then Superintendent of Police of Cuttack in his younger days during the Emergency period when his mother was Chief Minister.
BJD MP Baijayant Panda, on his part, happily welcomed the red beacon ban, further fuelling the speculations that he is inching closer to the BJP. Panda, who likes to be called ‘Jay’, has been proving to be a thorn in Naveen Patnaik’s flesh with his Twitting games and newspaper articles pointing out the ills afflicting the BJD without caring to talk to Patnaik obviously because the party chief has been distancing him from his close circle.
But Patnaik appears unable to chastise ‘Jay’, who has not yet acted as a joker and is from an industrial house of Odisha’s own and whose creditably successful entrepreneur-spouse Jagi runs the State’s leading television news channel.