BHUBANESWAR: The unceremonious manner in which minister of state for higher education Rohit Pujari was sacked on Friday is likely to change political equation in western Odisha districts. With election less than a year away, such a step may have an impact on some districts like Sambalpur and Bargarh. Pujari’s fall from grace will affect the BJD organisation in these districts, political observers said.
Pujari, a heavyweight in western Odisha politics, has a strong organisational base of his own since his Congress days when he was president of the state youth Congress. With him out of the power structure in the region, it will create a vacuum, sources in the BJD admitted.
Naba Kishore Das, Kishore Mohanty and Sushant Singh were known as the troika of BJD in western Odisha. Two of them are no more and Singh is sulking after he was overlooked in the last cabinet reshuffle. Though he has been given organisational charge of the region, he is not exactly happy, sources said.
Talking to this paper, Pujari, however, maintained that there is no politics in his ouster from the ministry. “It deals only with the functioning of the Higher Education department,” he said. The former minister said he will not be in any political difficulty. He will continue in the BJD and work in his constituency.
However, given the way he was sacked on the basis of his performance, it is unlikely that the ruling party will field him from Rairakhole assembly seat as that may present an opportunity to the opposition.
Meanwhile, president of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee Sarat Pattanayak said that Congress has adopted a wait and watch policy following the development.