Aama Odisha party chief Soumya Ranjan Patnaik on Sunday called for a political alternative to the BJD and the Congress in the State in which the fates of leaders are decided by voters and not by party bosses.
Addressing a rally at Basudevpur, Patnaik, who was recently expelled from the Congress for anti-party activities, launched a scathing attack on the ruling BJD saying the State cannot be run with “servants” and “Government servants” as is the case presently. While Ministers take pride in calling themselves “servants” of party supremo Naveen Patnaik, Government servants wield real power in the present dispensation, he said.
lambasting the BJD Government for its strategy of bribing voters with sops like allowances and pensions, highly subsidised rice, blankets and bicycles, Patnaik said voters are not “vegetables” who can be “bought” with money.
On the Congress and BJP affairs, Patnaik said while the fate of local leaders is decided by the mother-son duo of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi calls all the shots in the BJP. “There is a need for a party where local level leadership emerges from among the people and not at the whims and blessings of national leaders,” he said.