Pranab Prakash Das appointed BJD's new organisational secretary

BHUBANESWAR: Jajpur MLA, Pranab Prakash Das was appointed Organisational Secretary of the Biju Janata Dal on Thursday in an affirmation of the former minister’s influence in the party.
He had been appointed General Secretary- Organisation with his colleague Sanjay Das Burma as General Secretary-Headquarters last November. Chief Minster Naveen Patnaik, announcing this promotion on an event filled day marking Biju Patnaik’s 104th birth anniversary, said, “He has worked very hard in the 2014 and 2019 elections besides the by-elections in the State during the period. He will oversee the overall work of the organisation."

The appointment is the first, after the CM's re-election as party president, for the eighth time, on 26 February.

The 47 year old is the son of late Janata Dal leader Ashok Das a close associate of Biju Patnaik’s who never joined the BJD. Das, is among the handful of bureaucrats and politicians credited with Patnaik’s incumbency-defying return to power for a fifth term and had often been the target of opposition fire during the polls. He was also in charge of the high-stakes Patkura assembly by-poll in July 2019.

Das had been Patnaik’s energy minister from 2014 until a midterm 2017 reshuffle. He volunteered to work for the party after that avoiding another term as minister post BJD’s return to power in 2019.

According to many in the party, the three-time MLA was, for all practical purposes, the most influential BJD politician after Patnaik. His promotion had been on the cards for months now with political experts wondering whether he could be even be appointed ‘acting-president’.