Bhubaneswar, Nov. 17: Chief minister Naveen Patnaik will not attend the swearing-in ceremony of Nitish Kumar as chief minister of Bihar on November 20. Also, the BJD will not send any representative to the event, which is expected to be attended by a number of national and state leaders.

"Our party maintains equal distance from both the Congress and the BJP. As the Congress is part of the grand alliance led by the JDU and the RJD, we have decided to stay away from the event. Our participation will send wrong signals to the grassroots-level workers in the state," BJD spokesperson Samir Das told The Telegraph.

He said: "Nothing concrete has emerged regarding the formation of a Third Front (a political platform of non-Congress and non-BJP parties) so far. All these talks are at a nascent stage. It will not be proper for the BJD to take a stand so early on the issue. During Naveen's meeting with his Uttar Pradesh counterpart Akhilesh Yadav in Bhubaneswar on October 29, the two leaders did not discuss the forming of a Third Front at the national level," he said.

"So far, the NDA government at the Centre has been maintaining a soft attitude towards our government. This is notwithstanding the BJP state unit's aggressive posture towards the BJD. The reality is that Congress is the BJD's principal enemy in the state. We cannot afford to be seen hobnobbing with Congress leaders," said a senior BJD leader.

In any case, he said: "Our efforts are to protect the interests of Odisha. In the larger interest of the state, we will continue to extend issue-based support to the Modi government."

Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Srikant Jena said: "Naveen supporting the Narendra Modi government because of compulsions such as the CBI's probes into the mining and money deposit scams. We are not at all surprised at his decision to skip Nitish's swearing-in ceremony."

Naveen had deputed his finance minister Pradeep Amat to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Naranedra Modi as Prime Minister in May 2014. Asked about it, Amat said: "The two situations are different. Modi was being sworn in as Prime Minister for the first time. And in this present case, Nitish is going to be Bihar chief minister for the third time."