India, May 1 -- Bharatiya Janata Party leader (BJP) Aparajita Sarangi on Wednesday took a swipe at chief minister Naveen Patnaik's trusted lieutenant VK Pandian, alleging the bureaucrat-turned-politician had hijacked the governance system and the people's mandate in Odisha.

Sarangi said the chief minister, who had not been going to the state secretariat after the outbreak of Covid in 2020, had outsourced running the state government to Pandian, who had been the principal secretary to the chief minister for years. In October last year, Pandian quit the Indian Administrative Service and joined Odisha's Biju Janata Dal.

"No Sana Babu can take the place of Bada Babu, who has the people's mandate. The media in Odisha is not allowed inside th...