TV
The state unit of the BJP on Tuesday took a swipe at the previous BJD government over the recent spate of Vigilance raids on high-ranking officials and the detection of disproportionate assets.
The BJP said the vigilance raids revealed the corruption that had occurred during the time of BJD rule. Then the Vigilance was catching clerks and peons while shutting its eyes on officers. Now during BJP rule, officers starting from Chief Engineers to OAS officers are being caught, it alleged.
Giving an example of the arrest of Sunil Kumar Rout, the chief construction engineer of the Lower Suktel project in Bolangir, BJP spokesperson Anil Biswal said the proximity of Rout with VK Pandian and Naveen Patnaik is known to all. There are so many such officers who were working in the ecosystem of Pandian and were pocketing crores of people’s money, he added.
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“Gold ornaments weighing 1.5 kilograms, diamond necklace, 85 plots and flats in and outside Odisha are being detected in the name of those who were once tasked by Naveen Babu to guard villages. If this is the condition of those who were keeping a watch on villages, what would be the situation of Naveen Babu who was guarding the secretariat? Naveen Babu, who wears white clothes and claims he is clean, is being unmasked. The officers who have been arrested by the Vigilance are the stakeholders in the corruption done during Naveen Babu’s rule,” Biswal added.
Responding to Anil Biswal’s statement, BJD MLA Prashant Behera said, “The most popular Chief Minister of Odisha is Naveen Patnaik. He is an unblemished leader. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed on this. It is his clean image for which Odisha people allowed him to rule for 24 years. And, during his rule, Odisha’s development reached its pinnacle.”
