The Bihar ruling Janata Dal (United) on Monday urged the Union Government to confer Bharat Ratna to legendary political figure of Eastern India late Biju Patnaik without any further delay.

Addressing a Press conference here, party secretary general and former MP KC Tyagi along with former Union Minister Srikant Jena strongly favoured Bijubabu’s name for the coveted highest civilian award of the country.

While describing Eastern India as most backward and poor region of the country, Tyagi argued that all the States in the region Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal should be given special category State status where Union Government would spend 90% of the development contribution and individual State’s contribution would be 10%. Otherwise, the region would be left only as colonies of the Central Government, they said.

He urged BJD supremo Naveen Patnaik to revisit Janata Dal history and rejoin nation’s opposition mainstream to provide one-to-one fight against BJP in 2024 elections as has been proposed by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Putting ‘social justice’ as the main issue for 2024 general elections, Tyagi said unless States including Odisha go for caste based census, there would be no social justice and proportionate reservations. He appealed the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD Government to go for caste based census as it started in Bihar.

While elaborating JD (U)’s bitter experience in sharing power with the BJP in Bihar, the veteran Bihar politician said because of their
secret strategy to ruin JD (U) and Nitish Kumar, they walked out of the alliance. Since then, Nitish Kumar is concentrating on Opposition unity including the Congress and the Left.

Speaking at the meet, former Union Minister Srikant Jena while nodded Tyagi and JD(U)’s stand on Bijubabu , Naveenbabu and BJD, he  expressed concern over the injustice meted out to 94% people of the State who barely need reservation , including 54% OBC and around 40%  SC, ST, both in job and education.

Both leaders stated that the recent Supreme Court judgment favouring 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) has changed the reservation paradigm and arithmetic in the country as the SC has re-defined its own judgment cap of not exceeding 50% cap.