Satpathy made ruling party chief whip, gets cabinet rank

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today appointed Badachana MLA Amar Prasad Satpathy as ruling party's chief whip to pacify resentment in it due to non- representation of several areas in the cabinet after its recent reshuffle.

Satpathy was the BJD spokesman and would get the status of a cabinet minister as the ruling party's chief whip.

The party's chief whip was Ananta Das, who was recently appointed as a minister of state for the higher education. Now Sathpathy would take his place.

The Badachana MLA hailed from the Jajpur district that had no representation in the ministry on Sunday's reshuffle.

Pranab Prakash Das, the lone minister from Jajpur, had resigned ahead of Patnaik reshuffling his ministry.

Though Jajpur did not get a berth in the ministry on Sunday, one MLA, Satpathy now got the status of a cabinet minister.

Pradip Kumar Amat had resigned from the post of finance and health minister. He was named as the BJD candidate for the Odisha assembly speaker's post. The post had remained vacant after Niranjan Pujari joined the ministry.

On the growing resentment over the non-representation of over a dozen districts in the ministry, Patnaik had earlier said that MLAs from all areas cannot be included in the council of ministers since the size of the ministry is 22 while there are 30 districts in Odisha. AAM BBN SBN RAX

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(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)