Bhubaneswar: The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has appointed retired bureaucrat Ajit Kumar Mishra as Additional Political Secretary to party president Naveen Patnaik.
This comes almost a year after Santrupt Misra was appointed Political Secretary to the BJD supremo.
An OAS officer promoted to IAS rank, Mishra had served as Nabarangpur collector for four years from 2018, joint secretary in Housing and Urban Development department, additional secretary in Health and Family Welfare department and also as the project director of Odisha State AIDS Control Society (OSACS).
He was also posted as the chief executive officer of Western Odisha Development Council (WODC).
Mishra was reportedly in the race for a ticket for Kalahandi Lok Sabha seat, which the BJD wanted to wrest from the BJP in 2024 elections.
On Monday, Naveen had also reconstituted a Political Affairs Committee (PAC) and appointed new state-level office-bearers and convenors of BJD’s frontal wings. The PAC existed as the highest decision-making body of the party in its initial years and was then helmed by Bijoy Mohapatra, a close confidant of Biju Patnaik, but later became defunct.
Naveen himself will lead the newly-constituted PAC with senior leaders like Bikram Keshari Arukh, Pramila Mallick, Niranjan Pujari, Sanjay Kumar Das Burma, Pranab Prakash Das, Sudam Marndi, Tikuni Sahu, Sasmit Patra and Santrupt Mishra as its members.
