Former Chief Minister JB Patnaik has given a call for return of the “capable people” who have been thrown out of the Congress, raising speculations that his comment was aimed at Aama Odisha Party leader Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, who is his son-in-law.
Soumya Patnaik, it may be noted, was expelled from the Congress for six years for alleged anti-party activities in the run-up to the last general elections. “Many capable people have been thrown out of the Congress. They must be brought back for the party to regain its lost standing,” JB Patnaik said in an interview to a TV channel on Monday.
“Congress used to be a party of intelligent people. But some people have converted it into a mutt and have become it Mahants,’ Patnaik remarked. He said the Congress needs some “young blood” to infuse life into the moribund party organisation. He hoped that newly-appointed PCC chief Prasad Harichandan would resurrect the party from the grassroots.
Asked about JB’s comment, Soumya Patnaik declined to say if he would be willing to return to the Congress. But he stated that he had not left the party of his own volition but was expelled from it.
“I was thrown out of the party in an extremely humiliating way. Those who did it have got the reply in the last elections. I hope they would now bring about purity in their action and restore the ideals that the Congress has always stood for,” he said.