BHUBANESWAR: Amid disagreement over seat sharing, the BJP and BJD kept the pot boiling on the contentious issue of pre-poll alliance finally leaving it to the top leaders of the two parties to take the final call.
It was a day of high drama as state BJP president Manmohan Samal on his unexpected arrival from Delhi told mediapersons that his party will go alone in the ensuing elections to Assembly and Lok Sabha making it quite apparent that the alliance talks with BJD has failed. But, he made a U-turn an hour later stating he was misquoted by media.
“The BJP will fight the upcoming polls in Odisha independently and will form the government in the state alone with the blessings and cooperation of people,” he told reporters at his residence after returning from the national capital in the morning. He further said, “This time each Odia will take the responsibility to form a government that will uphold the self-respect and pride of the state.”
Samal repeated his statement with better clarity at a media briefing in the state party office much to relief of party leaders and workers who have been waiting anxiously to hear from him that the possibility of alliance with the BJD was over.
To give credence to his statement that BJP will fight the polls solo, he said the state election committee of the party will discuss and finalise candidates for 21 Lok Sabha and 147 Assembly seats which will be sent to the parliamentary board for approval. Samal posted what he told the media on his X account doubly confirming that there was no ambiguity in what he said.
However, in a complete U-turn from his statement after an hour, Samal told reporters at the party office that he has been misquoted by the media as far as alliance talks are concerned. “I never mentioned anything about alliance. The media is misinterpreting me by coming to a conclusion that the alliance talks are over,” he clarified.
While urging media to avoid speculations on BJD-BJP alliance as such reports are creating confusion among the party workers who are in a fix, Samal said national party president JP Nadda and the parliamentary board of the party will take a decision on the “sensitive” issue.
A senior BJP leader told The New Indian Express he was not fully convinced by what Samal said after his return from Delhi as his body language was not as usual. Had the alliance talks failed he would have been the first person to claim credit for it which was not visible.