Odisha’s ex-Chief Secretary Bijay Patnaik joins Congress
Odisha’s ex-Chief Secretary Bijay Patnaik joins Congress
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New Delhi/ Bhubaneswar: Former Odisha Chief Secretary Bijay Patnaik joined the Congress on Friday at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in New Delhi, in the presence of party general secretary KC Venugopal.
On this occasion, mallikarjun kharge, Odisha Congress In- charge A Chellakumar, PCC President Sharat Patnaik and Cuttack District Congress President Manas Choudhury were also present.
According to sources, the former bureaucrat communicated with Congress national leaders following the success of Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra. He will most likely be promoted to a senior position within the state party unit.
After serving as Chief Secretary, the 1976-batch IAS officer retired in 2013. From 2004 to 2010, he also served as Forest Secretary, Water Resources Secretary, and Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister.
A year after retiring, he was appointed chairman of the Odisha Staff Selection Commission and a member of the Odisha Human Rights Commission. There were rumors that he would be inducted into the BJD and given a Rajya Sabha seat soon after retiring.
Patnaik joined the Anil Agarwal Foundation in 2015 as the president of the Vedanta University Project. However, he left the Vedanta Group two years later because the project could not be implemented due to land acquisition issues.
He had previously denied rumors of him running for Congress in 2022, claiming that he was uninterested in politics.
