BHUBANESWAR: Asserting the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will have a landslide victory in the 2024 elections, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday said his party will also win the Assembly polls in Odisha even without a chief ministerial face.
Speaking on ‘Words, ideas and lessons: Creating a new sense of identity’ at the Odisha Literary festival here, Pradhan told editorial director Prabhu Chawla that the BJP had won elections in some of the states without projecting a chief ministerial candidate.
“We had won elections in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana without a CM face. We will win the Assembly elections in Odisha without projecting a CM candidate,” he said.Though the BJP fought the simultaneous elections to Assembly and Lok Sabha in 2014 and 2019 under the leadership of Pradhan, the party has never projected him as the chief ministerial candidate.
Top central leaders of the BJP have maintained the party will decide on the chief minister only after winning the elections which never happened. The party has taken the tactical move to keep all factions together.
Speaking on the theme, Pradhan said Kalinga civilisation is more than 2,500 years old and continues to thrive even today. The unique identity of the great civilisation and its people are inscribed in its monuments and temples. Citing the example of Konark temple and the giraffe sculpture on its edifice, he said people of ancient Kalinga has trade links with African countries.
The trade link may have been cut off due to trade war following trade fee imposed by the then Magadha king. Some historians also propounded that the Magadha kingdom became an enemy of Kalinga after the latter stopped supplying elephants which was a major weapon for military warfare.
Pradhan also said, many people may not be aware that great Odia writer and social reformer Fakir Mohan Senapati had ignited the minds of people against the monopoly of the British colonial rule over production and distribution of salt and clothes imported from Britain much before the launch of salt satyagraha by Mahatma Gandhi.He said the idea floated by the The New Indian Express needs further debate and discussions.