Alleging that the rule of law is a matter of convenience for Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, president of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) Niranjan Patnaik said time has come for people to question the way he has been mocking at it.
Stating that Naveen’s rhetoric of “law will take its own course” has fallen into a pattern, Patnaik stated in his latest blog post that he (Naveen) is not interested in the rule of law as much as he is interested in his public image.
OPCC president said the Ministers are dropped as soon as allegations are levelled against them. Then the investigation begins. But the whole process is so stage-managed that the same person is rehabilitated with a ministerial berth as soon as the incident fades away from public memory, he added.
Citing the case of former minister Raghunath Mohanty, Patnaik said though Mohanty resigned from the Cabinet, he has not been arrested so far.
The investigation was taken away from the local police as the lady SP of Balasore would not show any favour to Mohanty, the OPCC president said.
“Can anyone believe that the arrest of Mohanty could be delayed if Naveen had asked the police to arrest him?,” he asked.
The OPCC president gave examples of several other incidents in which such stage-managed investigations were ordered to let the culprits go scot-free in the end. Patnaik recalled an incident in 2003 when one Manas Ram was killed in the official residence of Irrigation Executive Engineer at Salapada in Keonjhar district.
The Executive Engineer was a witness and had given a statement to the local police that the assailants of Manas Ram were accompanied by the son of a person who is a minister now.
But, the Crime Branch left gaping loopholes in the investigation and as a result, all the accused were acquitted, he said and added that this is what Naveen wanted.
Patnaik gave the examples of several other BJD leaders who were asked to quit when things became too hot to handle. Many of them are back in the Cabinet now.
Allegations have been made against 32 ministers in 13 years and they have resigned.
But none of them has been arrested or prosecuted with any seriousness. If Naveen Patnaik is to be believed, none of his Ministers except one had anything to do with corruption or wrongdoing, the OPCC president said.
Patnaik added that all of them were given a clean chit in investigation and re-inducted as soon as the public forgot the exact reason why they had to resign and so long as they were loyal to Naveen.