Damodar Rout’s frustration after his dismissal from the Cabinet and the post of BJD vice-president last year has grown further due to clear indications that he will not be given party ticket to contest again from his Paradip or any other Assembly constituency in the coming elections.
That’s why Rout has now chosen to snipe at the Naveen Patnaik administration on corruption issues on a daily basis through an obliging section of the media.
The instances of “multi-crore” corruption he has been quoting relate to the Departments of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry and Cooperation during the period he was heading these departments as Minister. No wonder, his critics, including the Ministers presently in charge of the departments, are asking him why he did not act against the irregularities as he was the Minister and why he is shouting about them after so long a period.
Rout’s plea is that he initiated actions against the officials responsible for the corruption, but their “godfather” protected them. Asked to name the almighty saviour, he repeatedly says the person is known to all. He obviously refers to an official of the State Secretariat’s ‘Third Floor’ (the Chief Minister’s Office). The accusation is in effect directed against the Chief Minister.
Rout’s utterances have been embarrassing the Government in the State Assembly and in the public as opposition parties BJP and Congress are quoting him in their anti-BJD attacks ahead of the elections.
Rout seems desperate to maintain that he was disgraced out of the Ministry due to his resistance to acts of corruption and not because of his uncivilised public statements against the Brahmin community and women Anganwadi Workers.
It appears Naveen Patnaik will have no option but to remove Rout from the party sooner than later.
Once out of the party, Rout’s political career will come to a dead end as he has been winning elections due to the BJD’s popularity based on Naveen Patnaik’s image. People seem to have excused him for his description of the BJD’s symbol ‘Sankha’ (Conch) with ‘Genda’ (Snail) when he was in another party in the initial period of formation of the regional outfit in the name of Biju Patnaik.
Now distancing from Naveen Patnaik, Rout has been losing his ground in the Paradip politics with a few others, particularly leading trade unionist and Biju and Naveen Patnaik loyalist Santosh Pattanaik, emerging as rival aspirants for the BJD ticket for the constituency in the next elections. Moreover, district (Jagatsinghpur) BJD president Bishnu Das is against Rout because of the latter’s off-and-on unsavoury public references to Das.