The Congress held its first election campaign meeting after the declaration of General Elections at Chennapadi in Annadpur Assembly constituency.
Anandpur is the PCC president Jayadev Jena’s area. Hence, Jena chose his constituency to show his strength along with a galaxy of stalwart leaders of his party to mark the beginning of election campaign in the State.
Odisha in-charge BK Hariprasad, Suvankar Sarkar, MP Ranjib Biswal, Union Minister Srikant Jena, leader of Opposition Surendra Singh Bhoi, Debashish Pattnaik, Sura Routray, Keonjhar Congress district president Bana Bihari Pahi, among others, showed up in the meeting to plead for the Congress candidates.
Most leaders spoke about the vision of Congress party and the achievements of the UPA Government. Most pertinently, none forgot to criticise the BJD Government and the BJP on several fronts.
The Centre has given enough money for the development of the State but it is due to the inefficiency of the Naveen Patnaik Government that the money could not reach the poor people of Odisha, claimed Minister Jena. He alleged that Naveen Patnaik Government and his party are involved in the multi crore mining scam unearthed by the Shah Commission for which they feared a CBI probe into the scam.
“The BJD Government has achieved the disgrace for having maximum farmer suicides in the country. Odisha is now the most backward State but has become first in corruption at the national level,” said Hariprasad.
Some senior Congress men like Bhupinder Singh who were hand in gloves with the BJD and were involved in various scams have moved to join their friends in BJD after they realised that they will not be tolerated in Congress anymore, said PCC chief Jena.
“Singh was like a virus in a computer system. Now that the virus is gone and the party is safe. The opportunist leaders are being cleaned up, and agents of BJD who are creating nuisance in Congress in the disguise of party members have no place in Congress,” said the PCC chief.
Madhab Sardar, the Congress MP candidate for Keonjhar, also addressed the public highlighting different local issues like setting up medical college, steel plant in Keonjhar, water crisis, irrigation and problems of farmers in the district. However, former PCC chief Niranjan Patnaik, who is a senior Congress leader from Keonjhar district, and his followers were absent. About 5,000 party workers and villagers had gathered.