If, according to his opponents’ persistent criticism, Naveen Patnaik is heavily dependent on his select bureaucrats to run the State administration over the 18 years of his rule, the stigma has now worn out in larger public view as the Chief Minister is recognised by a leading media house of the country as the “Best Administrator” among his counterparts in other States.
Or, it may be construed that Patnaik’s confidants in the bureaucracy have hugely succeeded in turning the hitherto greenhorn in administration into an ace administrator through their constant endeavour.
Indeed, to the discomfiture of his detractor, Patnaik has this year become darling of the national media, now by the Outlook magazine and a couple of months by the India Today, which admiringly wrote “The Naveen Mystique”.
Whatever the encomiums these publications paid to Patnaik, critics, with enough reasons, do not spare his administration so many lapses encompassing all sectors of human life exemplified by lack of roads and healthcare infrastructure for which pregnant women are carried on shoulders to remote hospitals and delivering babies on roads that have become a daily occurrence. The picture of Dana Majhi carrying his ded wife on shoulders with his weeping daughter following him is still vivid in memory. Poverty continues in all its inhuman forms, including people particularly in the State’s western region, migrating in hordes to other States for a living and many of them being exploited in brick kilns and other workplaces. Scams like mining and chit fund still question the ability of the State administration.
Patnaik says Odisha will be made Number One State with his Government’s efforts. His legendary father Biju Patnaik had dreamt this long ago. Should one hope Naveen to achieve the dream given the present picture of the State’s backwardnessIJ
But at the same time, it is expected that the present public perception about Naveen would propel the BJD to a fifth-time-in-a-row electoral victory if Patnaik goes in for a mid-term poll in 2018, a year earlier than the scheduled 2019, to prevent the BJP from gaining further ground in the State.
Congress’ Jena group at its game again
The party high command is expected to replace Prasad Harichandan as Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president soon, very soon. It appears Niranjan Patnaik is the forerunner in the race as the replacement. But one is not sure if the AICC will the majority choice, Patnaik, in view of its strange decisions in the past. The Srikant Jena-Bhakta Das-Jayadev Jena combine seems on overdrive to stall Patnaik, their traditional foe, being the State party head. Srikant Jena’s statement a few days ago in an apparent gunning at Patnaik demonstrates this group’s determination to see him out of the position. Jena is lobbying against Patnaik on the ground that the latter is perceived as a mine looter as he belongs to a family of mining leaseholders. Jena had remained silent on the mining scam even after the Supreme Court’s verdict on the huge scandal some weeks ago. He only chose to speak out when an AICC team went back to Delhi after assessing the views of all sections of party leaders about who should head the State party with Patnaik emerging as the majority choice.
In fact, the Jena faction had succeeded in its lobby in ousting Patnaik as the PCC chief just ahead of the 2014 general elections and installing Jayadev Jena in his place. The poll results were disastrous for the party. The group is again at its game of playing the dalit card and projecting Bhakta Das as the new PCC president even if Das, no doubt a strong leader, has no all-Odisha appeal. A dalit card has, indeed, never helped the Congress in the State for an overall poll victory.