Bhubaneswar: The opposition Biju Janata Dal (BJD) on Wednesday launched a sharp attack on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Odisha, accusing it of misusing official government premises to conduct internal party meetings.
Terming it as “highly condemnable, BJD spokesperson Lenin Mohanty alleged that the BJP is attempting to convert official offices into party headquarters. He pointed to a specific incident during the recent visit of Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Minister Krushna Chandra Patra to Sambalpur district, where a BJP party meeting was reportedly included into the minister’s official programme.
According to the BJD, the schedule explicitly mentioned that the meeting would take place in the Collector’s conference hall, with directives issued to the District Collector to ensure the attendance of all district-level government officials.
The Opposition party questioned the propriety of holding a political party’s internal deliberations in an official government space and compelling public officers to participate. “This is a clear violation of administrative neutrality. Government facilities and officials are meant to serve the public interest, not to advance the agenda of any political party,” Mohanty told a presser.
The BJD leader further claimed that such practices are part of a broader pattern under BJP rule, where party leaders and workers have been disrupting government offices statewide, intimidating officials, and creating an atmosphere of pressure to serve party interests. He added these incidents have become a daily occurrence, severely undermining administrative impartiality and eroding public trust in governance.
Demanding a halt to such attempts to misuse government infrastructure for partisan purposes, he said: “The people of the state are already fed up with the deteriorating law and order and administrative collapse. If the BJP does not stop turning government offices into party offices, the BJD will be forced to take to the streets in protest.”
