BHUBANESWAR: BJP MP Aparajita Sarangi on Thursday slammed the state government for not inviting her to a Van Mahotsav event in the city and said her deliberate omission shows the narrow mindset of the BJD government. “While the chief minister, all three MLAs of Bhubaneswar and the mayor were invited, I was not. The local BJP corporator, too, was not invited. It’s very unfortunate and undemocratic. It also shows the government’s fear and arrogance,” said Aparajita, the Bhubaneswar MP, while her supporters staged protest outside the venue.
The bureaucrat-turned-parliamentarian said she became an MP because of the love and affection by the people of Bhubaneswar and that people’s representative must be invited to government functions. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik was the chief guest at the event which was attended by forest, environment and climate change minister Pradip Kumar Amat, science and technology minister Ashok Chandra Panda, MLAs Susant Rout and Anant Narayan Jena and mayor Sulochana Das.
The event was organised by the department of forest, environment and climate change. Aparajita said the pattern is not new. “As I had pointed out earlier also, I was not invited to the Capital Foundation Day function in April. That time I had written to the chief minister as well,” she said. Responding to the charges, minister Ashok Panda said he was also not invited to the inauguration of two Kendriya Vidyalayas (KV)s in his constituency (Ekamra-Bhubaneswar) in the past. “I was not invited to the inauguration of the KVs in Pokhariput and Kalinganagar,” he said.
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