By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: ‘You don’t decide overnight to take voluntary retirement. You plan it for long. If that be the case, the helicopter tours across #Odisha happened b4 mind was made up. Govt spent crores so someone could build own image. Public money for personal PR to help political career. Got it? Will go down in history as one of the costliest political launches….all paid for by unsuspecting public. @bjd_odisha, Veteran Journalist, Ruben Banerjee said in an X Post while commenting on former IAS Officer VK Pandian’s sudden rise in Odisha Politics.
Since VK Pandian left his IAS job and soon after got appointed as Chairman of 5T and Nabin Odisha, Opposition Parties, civil society activists, a section of media now running after him and questioning his rise in Odisha politics and his dominancy in State Bureaucracy.
A big question now raised in various circle. Will VK Pandian Publicly Declare, he is not aspiring to become Odisha CM? If Pandian does this, Opposition Congress and BJP will find no place to attack him or embarrass Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for his excessive dependence on IAS officers than his own MLAs and Ministers to run the State Government, which 23 years old. Pandian’s public declaration about his future plan may somehow save BJD in changing scenario. Also, by virtue of being the closest confidant of the ageing Chief Minister, he will be seen as Patnaik’s possible successor.
Pandian’s entry into Odisha Politics not a sudden move rather it was a pre-planned game for a swiftly transition of leadership in BJD. And if that happens, Pandian may play a bigger role considering Chief Minister Patnaik’s ill health and old age conditions.
Take the case of Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the Odisha man in Prime Minister Modi’s Cabinet. Since last 10 years, Pradhan in Government, because, he had represented Bihar and now Madhya Pradesh in Rajya Sabha and Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishanaw , who hails from Rajasthan , had also quitted IAS job and now representing Odisha in Rajya Sabha while Bhubaneswar MP Aparajita Sarangi , who from Bihar, too also left IAS job and now BJP MP in Lok Sabha.
Similarly, VK Pandian if rise within the BJD, it will not surprise many but certainly, the Regional Party may face revolt.
“Pandian stands to gain by quitting the IAS. He has rubbed too many senior bureaucrats the wrong way by bossing over them. These angry seniors would have made his continuation in the IAS impossible when Patnaik is not around” wrote Veteran Journalist, Ruben Banerjee.
