Though senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj failed to turn up in the Mahakalpada Assembly constituency to campaign for party candidate Bijay Mohapatra on Thursday, several State stalwarts of the party campaigned for Mohapatra and Kendrapada Parliament constituency party nominee Bishnu Das at a meeting, at Kalipadia in Marshaghai.
These leaders included the party’s Odisha Prabhari Arun Singh, Biswa Bhusan Harichandan and Sritam Das.Mohapatra, addressing the gathering of nearly 15,000 people stated that he is happy that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is panicked about the prospects of his BJD candidate for Mahakalpada (Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak) for which Patnaik hurriedly held a meeting here last week.
Mohapatra claimed that whenever a strategy is made in the BJD, he gets a hint about it from the ruling party sources as several BJD MlAs want to see a change of leadership in the State. “If the CM has the courage, let him contest against me in a fair way and let the voters decide who will win,” asserted Mohapatra. Pravari Arun Singh stated that senior BJP national leaders like Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj use to take advice from Bijay Mohapatra while they decide matters on Odisha. Singh urged voters to let Mohapatra win by a margin of 50,000 votes.
Harichandan said that when the Phailin hit Odisha Narendra Modi had asked Naveen Patnaik what types of help his Government needed from his Gujarat Government, but Patnaik declined to take any help from Modi.
Then, how Patnaik is now telling people that no BJP central leaders were on the scene after the calamity in Odisha, Harichandan demanded to know.