Bhubaneswar: Jagatsinghpur district administration has detained two publicity vans of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) on charge of using the picture of Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan with that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Supreme Court had ruled that ministers’ pictures cannot be used along with the Prime Minister in publicity material.
The IOCL has set rolling its publicity vans under ‘Jana Amantran Karyakram’ (public invitation programme) ahead of a function when Prime Minister Modi will dedicate to the nation the company’s refinery at Paradip February 7. “While the police detained a publicity van at Balikuda Wednesday, another vehicle was detained at Tirtol Thursday,” Jagatsinghpur collector Bijay Ketan Upadhyaya told PTI over phone Thursday.
“The district administration had asked police to detain the publicity vans carrying the petroleum and natural gas minister’s pictures which is against the Supreme Court direction,” he said. The collector said that the district administration had already ‘cautioned’ the IOCL authorities in this regard. He also said that the company did not take requisite permission from the police for playing loudespeakers.
Acting on the collector’s directive, police detained the two vans while they were publicising the dedication of Paradip refinery towards the people and the locality, and various welfare schemes of the Union government. State information and public relations secretary Manoranjan Panigrahi January 25 had asked the collector to look into the issue and take necessary action.
The IOCL has rolled out 30 such publicity vans in different districts January 23. All these vehicles had similar designs and pictures of Pradhan on them along with PM Modi.
The ruling BJD also strongly opposed Pradhan’s pictures being displayed, along with the PM’s photos, on the vans. Modi will dedicate the refinery to the nation February 7 this year. The state-of-the-art Rs 35,000-crore refinery with 15 million tonne capacity is IOCL’s largest refinery ever.When contacted, IOCL’s refinery project officials preferred not to react over the development. PTI