The charmed circles of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik are a devastatingly disappointed lot now as their longstanding claim that the high commands of both national parties, the Congress and the BJP, are opposed to criticism of Patnaik and his BJD has been emphatically demolished.
These circles were parroting their so-called considered view that the central leaderships of the Congress and the BJP were eyeing the BJD’s support during the post-general election exercise for formation of their respective UPA and NDA Governments at the centre. The pro-BJD quarters have been silenced after the open denunciation of the Patnaik Government’s performance and corruption by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and national president Rajnath Singh over the last two days.
Gandhi took on the BJD regime at a public meeting at Salepur on Sunday on grounds of corruption and poverty in the State and called upon people to throw it out in the coming elections. And on Tuesday, Modi, at his rally in Bhubaneswar, taunted and lambasted Patnaik for belying his father late Biju Patnaik’s dreams. Dreams of building a prosperous Odisha and keeping the State as the country’s poorest one during his long rule. Modi appealed to the people of the State to ensure overwhelming support for the BJP so that the saffron party forms Governments both at the Centre and the State.
Rajnath Singh, addressing the same meeting, even took on Patnaik on the corruption front and accused him of avoiding a CBI inquiry into the mega mining scam in the State in the wake of exposures in the Shah Commission report. As a significant development following the top Congress and BJP leaders’ anti-Patnaik tirade, the State units of these national parties are now upbeat as they were demoralised due to the earlier speculations that their parties’ central leaderships are soft on Patnaik, against whom they have been fighting at the field level in the State.