The bickering in the BJD continued with three more party leaders on Thursday attacking MP Bhartruhari Mahtab for his alleged anti-party article written in an Odia daily owned by him.
And party president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik continued in his dillydallying over the issue, saying he has yet to read Mahtab’s writing.
Interestingly, Patnaik had some time back taken almost a similar vacillating stand on a newspaper article written by another senior MP, Baijayant Panda, airing his views about the state of affairs in the BJD in the wake of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) spectacular gains in the last panchayat elections at the cost of the BJD.
On Thursday, BJD MP Nagendra Pradhan and MlAs Padmanav Behera and Debasish Samantaray criticised Mahtab for publicly coming out with comments which are detrimental to the party’s interest.
The intra-BJD attritions are apparently a result of the pressure the party is facing due to the BJP’s growing influence in the State politics. And the BJD turmoil is likely to worsen in the days to come, according to political observers.