Angul: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari’s Angul visit here was marred with controversy after ‘cash’ was recovered from inside media kits here on Friday.
Alleging bribe, the journalists present at the event created ruckus after they found Rs 500 note in each media kit provided by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) officials.
“We will definitely ask NHAI authorities on the issue of bribing journalists during the function,” said Diptanshu Sekhar Das, a journalist.
Following palpable tension and protest by journalists, police detained an official of NHAI.
“I was asked to distribute materials (kits) to journalists and I had no information about what was inside it,” said Siven Singh Parihar, PRO NHAI.
Meanwhile, leaders cutting across party lines have come out heavily against the incident.
“BJP is a party of publicity and the way they have tried to publicise their programme by bribing journalists is a threat to democracy,” said Commerce and Transport Minister Nrusingha Sahu.
BJP spokesperson Sajjan Sharma on the other hand clearly refuted such allegations.
“As people's faith on BJD is decreasing in Odisha, they are now trying to mislead by instrumenting such act,” Sharma added.
Nitin Gadkari was here to attend the ground breaking ceremony at Dussehra ground here for conversion of existing three lane National Highways to four lanes.
The project assumes significance as the existing Angul-Sambalpur, Tileibani-Sambalpur and Balanga-Jharpokharia national highways would be converted into four lane roads for addressing rising vehicular traffic.