Bhubaneswar, Aug 10 (PTI) Senior BJD vice-president and party MLA Soumya Ranjan Patnaik has said rulers should have alternative sources of information instead of totally depending on a specific bureaucrat or politician, in what appeared to be a veiled attack on Chief Minister and party supremo Naveen Patnaik.

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The lawmaker from Khanadapada, while addressing a function in Cuttack on Monday, named two persons - BJD's organising secretary Pranab Prakash Das (Bobby) and the chief minister's private secretary V K Pandeian, as his (Patnaik's) eyes.

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He also said the media should play the role of the state's “third eye” for better governance and also democracy.

Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, who joined the ruling BJD in 2018 , became a Rajya Sabha MP and later contested the assembly elections in 2019, said, “For the Odisha Chief Minister, they (eyes) are Bobby and VK Pandian, the 5T Secretary. Whatever he will see in these two eyes will be his world.”

However, the senior BJD leader said, things can go haywire if visions of these two persons get "blurred by selfish motives and the chief minister is convinced into believing what is not right".

Explaining his statement, S R Patnaik, who is also the son-in-law of former Congress chief minister J B Patnaik, said, “If the chief minister starts calling a crow white because of how his ‘two eyes' perceive it, then we are doomed.”

Mentioning that there is no guarantee that these “two eyes” will always see and tell the truth to the chief minister, he said, “To cross check the veracity of the statement of their ministers, the erstwhile kings used to go on ‘Andhari Bije' (visit in disguise) to get feedback about the administration,” and shot a question at the media whether it can play the role of a “third eye”.

When contacted by PTI, the BJD vice president said, “One television channel is showing my statement in a different manner. I have also mentioned names of Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and others while speaking on rulers' dependence on specific leaders and officers.

“I am told that a specific channel is showing me speaking only on the Odisha chief minister while the statement was made in general for the rulers and not specific to any chief minister or Prime Minister.”

Asked whether he took names of Bobby and V K Pandian, he said: “Yes I have mentioned their names for the sake of example. There is nothing wrong in citing instances to drive home a point.”

Earlier in a write-up in his leading Odia daily on July 1, the BJD MLA had criticised the state government and highlighted the alleged under-reporting of COVID-19 deaths in Odisha.

He had mentioned that there would be not much damage to the government if the” actual COVID-19 death toll was made public”.

The senior BjD leader had also triggered a row over the posters of the Prime Minister and the chief minister at Covid vaccination centres.

When reporters tried to get the BJD's official version on his remarks in Cuttack, many leaders refused to make any statement,

“I have not seen what he (Soumya) said in the Cuttack function. Better ask him,” said another BJD vice-president Debi Prasad Mishra.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)