Reacting to the Ministry reshuffle undertaken by BJD supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Sunday, the BJP said there is nothing new in it; in fact, the BJD has become jittery after the panchayat polls.
BJP State vice-president Samir Mohanty said that for the first time in his tenure of 17 years, Naveen Patnaik has thought of the BJP as an opponent. It has become increasingly clear that people of Odisha have accepted the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his popularity has been growing in the State.
The young brigade of Minister’s eased out of the Ministry under the guise of giving more time to party affairs is not true. Most of them had tainted images and were involved in some scam or the other. So, the Chief Minister had no other option but to remove them. The BJP had repeatedly pointed out that the people are angry with State Government for making many tall promises and not fulfilling them, said Mohanty.
He wondered that by undertaking the Ministry reshuffle what Naveen Patnaik can achieve now that he could not do in 17 long years. The senior leaders now inducted into the Ministry had also been dropped on various charges at different times.
However, the absence of the dropped Ministers in the swearing-in ceremony of new Ministers has brought to the fore the intraparty conflict in the BJD. By changing departments, one cannot ensure good governance.
The Chief Minister has been keeping some of the departments with him, since the beginning, but has it improved those departments’ overall performance, Mohanty questioned.