BHUBANESWAR: The line of dissenters within the BJD is getting longer with two more senior leaders openly countering party president Naveen Patnaik for giving a clean chit to former bureaucrat and politician VK Pandian over his alleged role in influencing the voting decision of the party MPs on Waqf Bill in the Rajya Sabha.
Former steel and mines minister Prafulla Mallick on Friday said, instead of the party president coming forward to defend Pandian, the latter should himself clarify whether he had any role to play in the issue. “The suspicion among the party leaders and workers will be removed once and for all, if Pandian himself announces he does not play any role in the party now,” Mallick said.
Stating that Pandian was responsible for the party’s defeat in the 2024 elections, Mallick said nobody in BJD wants his interference in party matters.
He also strongly disapproved the party’s president’s order that leaders cannot meet in hotels. “It is a personal matter where we will have meetings. If party convenes a meeting, we meet at Sankha Bhawan. Senior leaders have decided to meet again to discuss party matters,” he said.
Another leader Nrusingha Charan Sahoo also said that the BJD lost elections because of the Pandian factor. The BJD started declining after Pandian joined the party, he said and added that some people have wrongly represented the meeting of senior leaders in different places before the party president.
“When we sit together, we talk in the interest of the party. Even leaders like Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak and Sanjay Das Burma have attended such meetings,” he said.