Bhubaneswar: Senior BJP leader and Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan Saturday slammed the BJD government for the delay in giving NOC to former Odisha cadre IAS officer Aparajita Sarangi for VRS.
Sarangi had applied for no objection certificate (NOC) from the state government for her VRS September 15. However, the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) delayed it for two months even though the application reached them within 24 hours, Pradhan said. He said this while addressing a gathering organised to felicitate Sarangi after her induction to BJP.
The Union minister also criticised the BJD government alleging rampant corruption. “During Naveen Patnaik’s tenure, government-sponsored corruption has reached the peak. In 2015, the government had revised the Public Works Department Codes to give work orders worth Rs 5 lakh without tender, which was earlier Rs 50,000.”
With this revision, the government is distributing work to BJD workers and collecting huge amount of PC (percentage), he alleged. Work orders worth over Rs 10,000 crore are issued every year without tendering, he added.
Addressing workers and leaders at the party headquarters here after her felicitation, Aparajita said, “I have come here leaving the remaining 11 years of my service to serve selflessly to make Odisha a model state in the country. This is possible if we work on the principle of ‘one team, one dream’.”
Slamming the BJD government for rampant corruption in the state, the former IAS officer said why people should offer percentage (PC) as bribe to the officials when they have the right to get their work done.
Reacting to Pradhan’s allegation, BJD spokesperson Sulochana Das said the allegation is false, baseless and not based on facts.
“In fact, that Sarangi has started lying from her very first few days in politics speaks volumes of her unethical behaviour. When she applied for NOC, she had said that she would be joining an UN NGO and due to the confidentiality clause of UN, she could not speak more about it. But now the truth has come out that she had lied and the real motive was to join the BJP,” Das said.
Further, the BJD leader said Pradhan, who talks of Odia pride and has been targeting non-Odia officers, had to finally get a non-Odia Bihari officer to join BJP.
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