Naveen plays straight off the bat, free from any political remote control

By D N Singh This time the chief minister and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) supremo, Naveen Patnaik, while making a virtual address,  has played it straight off the bat. Making it to be his ‘mann ki bat’ the chief minister while enamored the pride and possessions of Odisha, made a richly-worded summation of his party’s position in the state which is ‘unique’. For the first time taking a front-foot stance, he made a subtle yet intelligent attempt to describe his party and government much different than others in the country. Free Of Subjugations He minced no words to describe the two major national parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress somehow being driven through the footprints of their respective national parties which, he underscored, the government in Odisha avoids the copy-cat politics and accepts the people of Odisha as its boss and accordingly draws the roadmap for people.  Naveen called upon the people of Odisha to take pride in the wealth that the state possesses. He extolled the rich cultural heritage of the state and the enormous treasure of minerals, unbounded bounty of nature in all its manifestations. Enhancing Self-reliance Patnaik described Odisha possessively self-reliant in many ways and the progress made in last several years has remained paradigmatic in essence. A state, he went on to add that, which works hard to jack up its progress which has become dynamic in nature by now. Be it governance, outreach and delivery, the dispensation always focused being treated as a system which is simply dedicated to the people. While making it abundantly clear that, his government is advancing at all fronts, he regretted over commitments made by the Centre on Special Status for Odisha, an issue which still lingers in the heaps of commitments only. Patnaik has been making the above demand since long on the grounds of the financial discomforts the state encountered under previous political dispensations those subsisted on the commands of their political masters at the central level. The virtual delivery of the speech by the chief minister never appeared to be sort of cold isolation from the Centre, but he went into the details how his government’s commitment to the people helped him to measure Odisha up in the graph of political good sense.     About the Author: DN Singh is a Bhubaneswar-based senior journalist. DISCLAIMER This is the personal opinion of the author. The views expressed in this write up have nothing to do with the www.prameyanews.com