On 2nd May, the Election Commission of India (ECI) issued an order to transfer Mission Shakti department commissioner-secretary Sujata Rout Karthikeyan in Odisha to a non-public dealing department effective immediately. She is the spouse of VK Pandian, the leader of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and chairman of 5T, who is a close associate of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
ECI sources attested to the fact that the action was carried out in response to a complaint that the officer had abused her position of authority and public office. She was accused by the Bharatiya Janata Party earlier in the day of exploiting her position to sway voters in favour of the BJD by exploiting the Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) program. She was “actively” acting as an agent of the state’s ruling BJD, according to a plea filed with the Election Commission by the BJP.
The BJP stated in its complaint that the current government utilized the Mission Shakti department to influence votes in favour of the BJD in the concurrent Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. The complaint read, “Mission Shakti is being grossly misused by the ruling dispensation of the state, that is, BJD, to influence voters to vote for it in the 2024 Parliamentary and Legislative Assembly Elections. The functionaries of the department have been compelling and coercing these Self-Help Groups (SHG) with the threat of stopping the government’s financial benefits, thus making them propagate and influence the voters. This is a brazen violation of the model code of conduct under the garb of SVEEP for reaching out to a wider population with its messages of voter awareness and education.”
The saffron party pointed out that the senior official was engaging in serious wrongdoing by leveraging power, resources and labour to persuade votes to the advantage of the BJD by means of the “SVEEP” initiative. It further mentioned, “It is extremely unfortunate that the serving IAS officer has given a go-bye to professionalism and is actively indulging as an agent of the BJD because of the influence of her husband on her. It would have been fair and proper for her to understand the implications of her being the wife of Pandian and, further understanding his role in the overall gamut of ongoing elections, she should have proceeded on leave and disassociated herself from anything to do with public dealing during the elections.”
On the contrary, the BJP highlighted that she was actively participating in the polls as a prominent person of the BJD in a manner that had never been seen before. “However, she is actively participating in the elections as a front person of the BJD in a manner which has been unheard of earlier.” The delegation appealed, “With a view to preserve the unbiased and unblemished reputation of ECI, it would be in the fitness of things to relieve Ms Karthikeyan from the post of commissioner-cum-secretary of Department of Mission Shakti and not assigned any public dealing duty till the conclusion of elections in Odisha.”
A top government official confirmed the transfer and stated that the state would notify her of her new role within a day or two. A memorandum in this regard was submitted to the ECI in New Delhi by a high-level BJP delegation that included Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Sudhanshu Trivedi and BJP general secretary Om Pathak.
The Odisha government has established over six lakh self-help groups with almost 70 lakh women in them as part of Mission Shakti. The Odisha government guarantees bank loans to these SHGs so they can start different types of livelihood enterprises under the 2001 program. The BJD’s recurrent election triumphs have been largely attributed to its rural women supporters, making this endeavour one of Naveen Patnaik’s administration’s key priorities. The Patnaik government accepted a proposal to award government enterprises worth Rs 1,000 crore to women’s self-help groups (SHGs) after winning the 2019 elections for the sixth time. With a budget of thousands of crores, the department, in line with its charter of duties, supports numerous SHGs and offers its members profitable activities through the provision of financing, market connections and other financial benefits.
