In yet another instance of the intra-party bickering in the State Congress, senior party leader lalatendu Bidyadhar (lulu) Mohapatra has termed Union Minister and PCC Campaign Committee chairman Srikant Jena’s statement on Monday as ‘absurd and rubbish’.
He said the statement made by Jena in the course of an interview with an Odia TV channel that prayers wishing his defeat in the election to the Baleswar lok Sabha seat were conducted in Guwahati by some people over the last one or one and half months is rubbish and unbecoming of a person who claims to be a senior leader.
Mohapatra said that he and some other party leaders like Narasingha Mishra and MlA Dushmant Nayak had visited Guwahati recently. If Jena thinks these leaders had prayed for his defeat, who is stopping him from holding a Yajna as a counter-measure to ensure his victory, Mohapatra quipped.
On Jena’s statement that he had refused to take the responsibility of campaigning for other party candidates and made this clear to the party high command, Mohapatra said this is a lame excuse. On the one hand, he wanted to grab all the power and party positions and on the other, he chose to run away from the responsibilities. Why didn’t he hand over the responsibility of campaigning to other senior leaders, Mohapatra questioned.