Bhubaneswar: Infighting in the ruling BJD in Odisha cropped up on Monday when senior leader Dr Damodar Rout and party’s spokesperson Pratap Jena locked the horns over black flag showing issue.
Dr Rout, who has been always straight forward and outspoken over anything, dared to speak against the party leaders putting the BJD in trouble.
However, Pratap Jena tried to patch up the statement made by Rout over the black flag showing issue during BJD’s padyatra.
He termed Rout’s statement as his personal. “Although, Rout is the vice-president of the party, his statements made earlier are personal. That cannot be accepted as the statement of the party”, Jena said.
In his reaction, Rout said that he is not the spokesperson of the government. Even he has not told Jena to accept his statement. “It does not matter whether Jena accepts my statement or not, but people always accept my opinion”, Rout said.
Criticising BJD over the contradiction of statement, senior Congress leader Niranjan Patnaik alleged the infighting among the leaders in BJD.
BJP state president KV Singhdeo did not spare an opportunity to comment on the issue. He said that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has failed to resolve the party’s internal matters and the leaders are now setting up their own agenda.
He termed the statement war as BJD’s drama that Odisha people have been witnessing in the past 15 years. This is now at the last stage.
The alleged infighting within BJD came up after Panchayati Raj Minister Arun Sahoo was shown black flags during padyatra in Bhawanipatna.
While BJD alleged Congress workers of showing the flag flags to Sahoo, Rout said that BJD workers waived black flags.
The Jansampark Padyatra of BJD was launched by CM Patnaik on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti on Oct 2 to reach out to people and create awareness about the BJD government’s progarmmes and Centre’s apathy towards Odisha.
