40 years after Biju Patnaik, Pradhan fills his shoes in steel ministry

NEW DELHI: The steel ministry on Friday saw a politician from Odisha at the helm after 40 years when Dharmendra Pradhan took charge, filling the shoes of Biju Patnaik — a towering figure of Indian politics from the state who served as the steel minister from 1977 till 1979 spanning two governments under the prime ministership of Morarji Desai and Charan Singh.
Pradhan’s appointment as steel minister — in addition to the petroleum ministry, which he retains — is seen as a recognition of his performance in spearheading the BJP’s rise in Odisha. His hard work resulted in the party winning eight Lok Sabha seats from one earlier and 23 seats in the assembly from 10.
Thanks to Pradhan’s groundwork, the BJP has emerged as the clear challenger to chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal.
Pradhan is also credited with the success of the Ujjwala scheme for providing LPG connection to poor households free of cost. He has personally driven the scheme to take clean cooking fuel to over 7 crore poor homes, which greatly contributed to the BJP’s sterling performance in the LS polls by extending the party’s rural outreach.
But on Friday, Pradhan was being modest when he said after taking charge at the steel ministry, “I will strive to achieve all the goals of the National Steel Policy after understanding the intricacies of the sector.” While Biju Patnaik had held the twin portfolios of steel and mines, his son and the chief minister held only the mines ministry in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
Pradhan also made his priorities clear for the second innings in the oil ministry. “Consumers will remin our priority,” he said, reinforcing the perception of the ministry being one of the government’s social welfare arm rather than an economic wing.
“We will focus on more consumer-friendly measures, debottlenecking for greater ease of doing business and speeding up projects such as the Urja Ganga and work on city gas networks in 400 cities,” he said.
Pradhan is the only oil minister after Atal Bihari Vajpayee government's Ram Naik to have completed full five-year term. But unlike Naik, he has been reassigned the ministry, which he had made a common household name through the Ujjwala scheme.
Late Murli Deora of the Congress too had a five-year stint - from January 2006 to January 2011, as the oil minister but it was split over UPA-1 and UPA-2 governments under prime minister Manmohan Singh.
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi reposing faith in him again, Pradhan is set to break the records of Naik and Deora to be the longest-serving Oil Minister of the country.
Hailing from Odisha, where his almost weekly visits and thousands of public meetings helped create a groundswell for the BJP in the state, he paid obeisance at Shree Jagannath Temple in Puri in the morning before coming to the national capital to take charge of the two ministries.