Bhubaneswar BJP MP Aparajita Sarangi on Sunday slammed the State Government for its alleged failure to prevent the violence in Sambalpur city during the Hanuman Jayanti celebrations.
She said the violence happened despite the police administration having a prior intelligence report about such a possibility.
“The first thing is that why an incident is allowed to take place and the second thing is why police are so callous in responding to such serious incidents,” asked Sarangi.
“None other than Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik should be blamed for this because he holds the Home portfolio. The second thing is punitive action. If the incident took place, the miscreants should have been apprehended within 48 hours of the incident,” she added.
BJP State president Manmohan Samal also attacked the State Government on the issue.
“If you had the intelligence report, why you didn’t take preventive steps accordingly? If my government was in power, I should have taken the responsibility,” said Samal.
However, senior BJD leader Shashi Bhushan Behera countered the BJP charge and said, “If there was no peace and law and order in the State, foreign investors wouldn’t have shown interest to invest crores of money here. If any conspiracy is being hatched to destroy the tranquility and disturb the investors, people will give the conspirators a befitting reply.”
Asked why the violence took place in Sambalpur despite the intelligence report, Behera parried the questions and told journalists to ask the police and the intelligence departments.