The ruling BJD had great relief when the Opposition Congress and BJP restricted their demand to a statement of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on the rape and murder of a minor girl at Salia Sahi in the State capital.
Though the incident was a fit case for demanding a detailed discussion through an adjournment motion, the Opposition was merely satisfied with its demand of a statement from the Chief Minister, pointed out an gleeful senior BJD MlA. “Thank God, the situation cooled down in a nice way. The matter ended with the Chief Minister giving a statement. Had they demanded the CM’s resignation, the situation could have taken different turn,” he said.
Though the Congress and the BJP have been staging demonstrations outside the Assembly, they surprisingly limited their action in the House. As the Congress recently held a massive rally at Kendrapada and highlighted the ever-growing crimes against women, including the rape and murder of a 14-year-old student in Kendrapada, besides demanding resignation of the Chief Minister, the Assembly floor managers of the BJD had been worried after the incident of rape and murder in the capital city.
The issue of the Bhubaneswar rape and murder case was raised by the BJP’s KV Singh Deo, who is also the party’s State president. He had visited the Capital Hospital when people were agitating over the shocking incident and opposing postmortem of the victim. But he chose to restrict his demand seeking a statement from the Chief Minister.
This was followed by a similar demand from leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh (Congress) besides also demanding an apology from him over the incident. And for Naveen Patnaik, making a statement expressing his “heartfelt sorrow” over the incident on behalf of the House and not from the Government alone and announcing an ex-gratia of Rs 10 lakh to the deceased girl’s family, escaped the heat that political observers had expected from a larger debate on the rapes and other crimes that have become a daily affair across the State.
The Opposition, according to observers, seems to have lost right perception of issues for highlighting in the Assembly, which is meeting only for seven days in this session. The Bhubaneswar rape and murder took place in the backdrop of two such other major incidents recently, one at Mahakalpada in Kendrapada district and the other involving a blind girl in Puri district.