Former Odisha Chief Secy Bijay Patnaik Joins Congress

New Delhi/Bhubaneswar: Former Odisha Chief Secretary Bijay Patnaik joined Congress at the headquarters of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in New Delhi on Friday in the presence of party general secretary KC Venugopal.

Odisha Congress in-charge A Chellakumar and the party’s state unit president Sarat Pattanayak will also present.

He later met party national president Mallikarjun Kharge.

According to sources, the former bureaucrat was in touch with the national leaders of Congress after the success of the Bharat Jodo Yatra of  Rahul Gandhi. He is likely to be given a senior position in the state party unit.

The 1976-batch IAS officer retired in 2013 after serving as Chief Secretary. He also served as Forest Secretary, Water Resources Secretary and later as Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister from 2004 to 2010.

Following his retirement, he was appointed as the chairman of the Odisha Staff Selection Commission and as a member of the Odisha Human Rights Commission, a year later. There was speculation that he might be inducted into BJD and given a Rajya Sabha berth soon after his retirement.

In 2015, Patnaik joined the Anil Agarwal Foundation as the president of Vedanta University Project. However, he quit the Vedanta Group two years later as the project could not be implemented due to land acquisition problems.

He had refuted talks about joining Congress in 2022, saying that he was not interested in politics.