Chief minister Naveen Patnaik will attend his first public meeting, around 10 months after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, in Kalahandi on Thursday on Makar Sankranti, one of the festivals that is celebrated in western Odisha in a big way. The chief minister had been so far confined to Naveen Niwas, except for visiting the shrines of Lord Jagannath in Puri and Lord Lingaraj in Bhubaneswar and the Baramunda bus stand for a review. The ruling Biju Janata Dal has asked nearly 70 of its MLAs and ministers to reach Kalahandi a day ahead of Naveen’s public meeting. They have been asked to fan out to different parts of the district, right upto the panchayat level, to make people aware of the various welfare programmes of the government.