Naveen: Moving on

Bhubaneswar/Cuttack, Jan. 29: A day after Naveen Patnaik’s motorcade met with an accident, those responsible for the chief minister’s safety kept their fingers crossed today as he left the city to attend a pre-panchayat poll meeting.

Yesterday, Patnaik and BJD parliamentarian Prasanna Patasani — who were on their way to Jatni, around 20 km from here, to address a pre-poll meet — received minor injuries after their vehicle rammed into the pilot jeep travelling ahead of them. The mishap occurred after the driver of the police vehicle applied the brakes to avoid hitting a two-wheeler coming from the opposite direction.

Talking to The Telegraph, deputy inspector-general of police (Bhubaneswar) Y.B. Khurania said the chief minister was travelling in a private vehicle, and not a government one, when the accident took place yesterday.

The driver of the Innova, explained the DIG, was not trained to manoeuvre a vehicle in a motorcade. When the driver of the pilot vehicle applied the brakes seeing the two-wheeler approach the chief minister’s convoy, the person driving the Innova failed to react on time. As a result, the car hit the jeep from behind, he added.

The chief minister, who avoids using government transportation when the model code of conduct is in force, today headed for Ganjam district on a campaign tour in another private vehicle.

“We briefed the driver of the chief minister’s car on how to drive while moving in a motorcade,” said Khurania.

He, however, could not come up with a reply when asked if the police bothered to train the drivers of private vehicles the chief minister had reportedly used during poll campaigns in the past.

A case has been registered at Jatni police station and investigation is on,” said the DIG. A total of eight persons sustained injuries in yesterday’s mishap. Of them, four persons, including the youths riding the two-wheeler and two policemen, were shifted to SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack.

The condition of all four persons was said to be “out of danger” today. The two policemen are Birupakhya Das, the officer in-charge of the chief minister’s pilot vehicle, and Jajati Kishore Rout, a constable accompanying him.

“Their condition is stable,” said Bhuban Maharana, a medical officer at the hospital, said today. The scooterists, Sambit Patnaik and Debashis Swain, were also recovering.