Bhubaneswar, April 3: Official work at the municipal corporation has taken a hit as mayor Ananta Narayan Jena is too busy with his prime pre-occupation — party work and poll campaign. 

The proposed shifting of the planning, enforcement and recovery wings, along with the land section of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), from the nearby State Urban Development Authority (Suda) office to the BMC-Bhawani Mall at Saheed Nagar is getting delayed with Jena busy camping in west Odisha since March 26 for the April 7 civic polls. He is expected to return to the city around 
April 8.  

The departments were supposed to have moved out of the Suda building on April 1 to coincide with Utkal Divas.
“Everything, including office furniture, is ready at the BMC-Bhawani Mall and we are ready to move in there any moment. We were scheduled to shift on April 1, but due the mayor’s absence we could not do it. Now, we have to reschedule it to another day and it may happen around April 10 after the mayor returns to the city,’’ said a senior official requesting anonymity.

The mayor, who is also a senior BJD leader, is busy touring several west Odisha towns as party’s campaign manager in-charge of five municipalities and three notified area councils (NACs) that are going to the polls on April 7.
“I have been lucky to be chosen as a lead campaign manager by the party high command and I will return to Bhubaneswar by April 8. Once I reach the state capital, the office shifting work can be executed,’’ Jena told The Telegraph over phone on Friday morning. 

Civic polls are being held in five municipalities across the state in Balimela, Sunabeda, Rairakhol, Belpahar and Paradip and the NACs include Dharmagarh, Tusara and Daspallah. 
Today, the Bhubaneswar mayor was campaigning in Belpahar of Jharsuguda district in west Odisha.
Though the long-planned shift of the crucial corporation departments have been put on hold because of the mayor’s long absence on poll job, a senior official of Jena’s team said that routine work of the municipal corporation was being carried out. 

“The mayor's absence is not affecting any official work. As the chief of contracts committees in the BMC, he had cleared all files related to payments and work orders before leaving for poll campaign. He had also held two extra meetings in this regard before he left the city,'' the senior municipal corporation official said on condition of anonymity.

However, in the past also Jena had left the city to oversee BJD poll campaigns elsewhere. In September 2013, he camped in Berhampur to oversee BJD’s electoral campaign for civic polls there. After he ensured that the elected BJD members of the Berhampur Municipal Corporation did not switch sides in the run up to the mayoral poll, the party high command asked him to take all the councillors on a pleasure trip outside the state.
Even then Jena’s Berhampur assignment had also come in the way of execution of several important civic jobs that included the Durga puja preparatory meeting.

While the planning wing was shifted from the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) to the BMC towards the end of last year, it has been functioning from a temporary space at the Suda office. The plan was to shift to the new office at BMC-Bhawani Mall on Utkal Divas. The enforcement wing came under BMC’s control in February this year.
“The municipal corporation has got a 72,000sqft office space at the mall. As there were no takers and as it was lying unutilised for a long period, the civic authorities planned to use the 7,000sqft for its three wings — planning, enforcement and land as all three are inter-linked,’’ said an official.

“The BMC council has agreed not to sale the joint-venture property and put them on rent. As our offices will take up 7,000sqft and a national public sector company will occupy another 3,000sqft in the near future, we are hopeful that more and more agencies will come forward to take the prime property on rent,’’ chairman of the civic body’s finance and taxation standing committee Seikh Nizammudin told The Telegraph over phone.

It is another matter that the senior councillor is also on a poll campaign duty at Daspalla NAC.