Bhubaneswar: A week after the swearing-in ceremony, the state government has allotted cabins in state Secretariat to 16 ministers for running their offices.
The General Administration (GA) department has issued an order in this regard, Thursday. As many as 11 ministers have been given cabins in the second floor of the Secretariat while five others got rooms in the first floor. Usually, offices of all ministers are located in these two floors and only the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) is in the third (top) floor of the main building of the Secretariat.
Nine Cabinet Ministers— Niranjan Pujari, Bikram Keshari Arukh, Prafulla Mallik, Susanta Singh, Tukuni Sahu, Ranendra Pratap Swain, Padmanabha Behera, Sudam Marndi and Naba Kisore Das have got rooms in second floor. Two Ministers of State (MoS)— Samir Ranjan Das and Jagannath Sarka have been allotted office cabins in the same floor.
Similarly, two Cabinet rank ministers Arun Kumar Sahoo and Pratap Jena have got offices in the first floor. Three MoS— Dibya Shankar Mishra, Ashok Chandra Panda and Jyoti Prakash Panigrahi have got rooms in the first floor.
Cabins of continuing ministers Prafulla Mallik, Pratap Jena, Niranjan Pujari, Bikram Arukha, Susanta Singh and Ashok Panda remained the same.
The government has not allotted offices for Four MoS— Premananda Nayak, Raghunandan Das, Padmini Dian and Tusharkanti Behera. Excluding Nayak, the other three are first time MLAs, who became ministers.