Aparajita Hits Out At 5T Again; BJD Says She Has Identity Crisis

Bhubaneswar: BJP leader and Bhubaneswar MP Arajita Sarangi on Sunday slammed the 5T agenda of the Odisha government and said that this was not the right governance model.

The former bureaucrat said that it is a flawed initiative, which has created a separate power centre and weakened the existing institutions. “It is an anomaly. In my 20 years of service, I have never seen senior officials accompanying junior officials. This is disrespectful and hampers the self-esteem of the minsters and the secretaries,” she said during an official visit to Sambalpur.

It will not be incorrect to term it as incongruity in the administrative setup, she added.

On October 2, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik rolled out the ‘Mo Sarkar’ initiative, a component of 5T, with an aim to achieve progress through Transparency, Teamwork, Technology, Time and Transformation.

“The 5T management principle is taught in all business and management institutes. It is not a novel initiative,” she said, adding that it should not be confined to a few departments.

“There should be monitoring of the parameters every three months,” the Bhubaneswar MP said.

Aparajita said that she had never shied  away from praising the good work done by the government, but the wrong needs to be pointed out too.

In a counter, BJD MP and spokesperson Dr Sasmit Patra attributed Aparaita’s outburst to an  ‘identity crisis’. “She continues to oscillate between being a former administrator and a politician,” he told mediapersons.

Patra further said not only BJP-ruled states but also the government at the Centre will soon accept public-oriented policy like 5T.

In his fifth term as Chief Minister, Naveen had spelled out his governance mantra – 5T (teamwork, technology, transparency, transformation and time limit) to his Cabinet colleagues and senior officials soon after assuming office, knowing well that the people of Odisha expected something more from him this time round.

Secretary to Chief Minister (Transformation & Initiatives) VK Pandian has since been making whirlwind tours of the state, visiting hospitals, police stations and government offices in remote districts. Most of these visits have been kept under wraps lending it an element of surprise.

Besides, his team having lunch with villagers at an Aahar centre in Boudh district and then with inmates of an orphanage in Keonjhar district has done a lot of good to people’s perception of the governance mechanism.

While the citizen empowerment initiative was launched in two departments (Healthcare and Police) initially, the government on October 16, following positive feedback, announced to cover five more departments in the second phase and the remaining by March 2020.