Sujata R Karthikeyan
Credit: X/@ANI
Bhubaneswar: Senior Odisha IAS officer Sujata R Karthikeyan, the wife of BJD president Naveen Patnaik’s close aide V K Pandian, has sought voluntary retirement, official sources said on Saturday.
Karthikeyan, a 2000-batch Odisha cadre officer, is the special secretary in the finance department. She has applied for voluntary retirement owing to personal reasons, they said.
Her bureaucrat-turned-politician husband, V K Pandian, had also obtained voluntary retirement in October 2023 and joined the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) headed by Patnaik.
Pandian, however, announced his withdrawal from active politics in the wake of the regional party’s defeat in the Lok Sabha and assembly polls last year.
In May 2024, the Election Commission had ordered Karthikeyan’s transfer to a non-public dealing department following allegations of misuse of her office. She was then serving as the commissioner-cum-secretary, Department of Mission Shakti.
Karthikeyan went on a six-month leave after the BJD lost the elections in 2024. She was granted leave till November 26 last year, but her application for extension was rejected by the state’s BJP government.