Cooperation Minister Damodar Rout was on Wednesday highly embarrassed in the Assembly by no other member that his ruling Biju Janata Dal’s Surjya Narayan Patro on the basis of Rout’s media statement on the defunct cold storages in the State.
Patro, during the Question Hour, pointed out that according to Rout’s media statement, 10 cold storages are defunct and his department’s Registrar is not acting as per his instruction to revive them.
If the Registrar is not acting in accordance with the Minister’s advice, has the Minister drawn the attention of the Chief Secretary, who is the head of the State’s administration, to this, Patro wanted to know from Rout.
Or, did Rout bring this fact to the notice of the Chief Minister, who is the head of the Government, Patro further wanted to know from Rout.
Even as Opposition members enjoyed Patro’s questions by tapping their desks, Rout stood up but did not directly answer the queries. He, instead, cited the affair of a cooperative society in Patro’s Ganjam district in an apparent bid to divert the original issue.
A seemingly helpless Rout wanted Patro to come to his office so that he would explain the issue to him.
Political observers wondered how a senior Minister like Rout thought asking a member of the Assembly to get the answers of his questions which the MlA posed in the House itself.
The observers also noted that the Opposition members, for reasons best known to them, chose to lose a chance to embarrass the entire Naveen Patnaik Government by not asking Rout to answer the questions put in the Assembly.
After all, the opposition parties and other critics of the Government have been criticising the Chief Minister for ignoring the elected political leaders, including his Ministers, and heavily depending on the bureaucrats in running the administration, as a result of which the bureaucrats are having an upper hand in all matters.
Rout’s alleged statement that his department’s Registrar was ignoring him corroborated this syndrome in the State’s governance, the political observers pointed out.