BHUBANESWAR: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, along with the BJD MP and MLAs from Bhadrak district, has decided to boycott the ‘bhumi pujan’ ceremony of Dhamra LNG Terminal scheduled on Saturday at Dhamra port giving a new turn to the widening rift between the regional party and the BJP, who are engaged in a war of words to gain political supremacy at the State level.
Sources in the BJD alleged that the decision to boycott the event was taken as the place where a meeting will be held after the ‘bhumi pujan’ did not have a single poster of the Chief Minister. The meeting place is full of posters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, a BJD leader said.
Besides, the MP, Revenue Minister and MLAs were also not properly invited. Alleging that the BJP has turned the ‘bhumi pujan’ ceremony into a party meeting, the BJD leader said the Chief Minister will have to share the dais with defeated BJP leaders. However, these may not be the only reason behind the BJD’s decision to boycott the ‘bhumi pujan’ ceremony. The two BJP ministers from Odisha, Pradhan and Jual Oram, had not attended the inaugural ceremony of the Asian Athletics Championships (AAC) though they were invited. Besides, the BJP MLAs had also boycotted the inaugural of AAC.
The relations between the BJD and BJP had touched a new low during the three-day visit of BJP national president Amit Shah to Odisha from June 4 to June 6 when he asked the party workers to defeat the BJD government in 2019 polls.
Besides the Chief Minister, the names of Arjun Charan Sethi, BJD MP from Bhadrak, Minister for Forest and Environment Bijoyshree Routray, Minister for Women and Child Development Prafulla Samal, BJD MLAs from Chandbali, Dhamnagar and Bhadrak, Byomakesh Ray, Muktikanta Mandal and Jugal Kishore Patnaik respectively were printed in the invitation card for the ceremony.
The ‘bhumi pujan’ would have been done by the Chief Minister in the presence of Pradhan. Besides Pradhan, the invitation card also has the names of leader of the BJP Legislature Party K V Singhdeo, former BJP Minister Manmohan Samal and former BJP MLA Bishnu Das.
Fight for supremacy
Decision was taken as the venue did not have a single poster of the CM
The meeting venue is full of posters of PM and Union Oil Minister
MP, Revenue Minister and MLAs not properly invited
The bhumi pujan would have been done by the Chief Minister in the presence of Dharmendra Pradhan