Biju Patnaik Sports Award will not be renamed: CM

Bhubaneswar: A day after criticism from the Opposition BJD, Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi on Sunday announced that the State government’s Biju Patnaik Sports Award would not be renamed. The Sports and Youth Services department had on Friday issued guidelines for this year’s award, renaming it ‘Rajya Krida Samman’.

The Chief Minister said his government has not taken any formal decision to drop Biju Patnaik’s name from the award. “My government respects the sons of the soil and therefore, there will be no change in the title of the sports award named after Biju Patnaik,” he said, adding that he came to know about renaming from the press.

Strongly reacting to BJP government’s decision to rename the award, which was launched by Naveen Patnaik government in 2001-02, senior BJD MLA Arun Sahoo had said that Biju Patnaik, a noted aviator and a former CM of the State, was not an individual but an institution.