IOCL's publicity van detained for using minister's picture

The Jagatsinghpur district administration has detained two publicity vans of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) on charge of using the picture of Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan with that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Supreme Court had ruled that ministers' pictures cannot be used along with the Prime Minister in publicity material.

The IOCL has set rolling its publicity vans under 'Jana Amantran Karyakram' (public invitation programme) ahead of a function when Prime Minister Modi will dedicate to the nation the company's refinery at Paradip on February 7.

"While the police had yesterday detained a publicity van at Balikuda, another vehicle was today detained at Tirtol,"Jagatsinghpur district collector Bijay Ketan Upadhyaya told PTI over phone today.

"The district administration had asked police to detain the publicity vans carrying the Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister's pictures which is against the Supreme Court direction," he said.

The collector said that the district administration had already "cautioned" the IOCL authority in this regard.

He also said that the company did not take required permission from the police for playing loudespeakers.

Acting on the collector's directive, police detained the two vans while they were publicizing the dedication of Paradip refinery by the Prime Minister and various welfare schemes of the Union government.

Earlier on January 25, Odisha Information and Public Relations Secretary Manoranjan Panigrahi had asked the Collector to look into the issue and take necessary action.

The IOCL has rolled out 30 such publicity vans in different districts on January 23. All the 30 vehicles had similar designs and pictures of Pradhan on them along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The ruling BJD in Odisha also strongly opposed Pradhan's pictures being displayed, along with the Prime Minister's photos, on the vans.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will dedicate the refinery to the nation on Feb 7, 2016. The state-of-the-art Rs 35,000 crore refinery with 15 million MT capacity is IOCL's largest refinery ever.

When contacted, IOCL's refinery project officials did not to react over the development.