A Twitter war erupted between two senior MPs of the BJD — Tathagat Satapathy and Jay Panda — on Tuesday, indicating all was not well within the party.
Without taking names, Satapathy made the sensational allegations that someone from his party was planning to cross over to the BJP, which, he alleged, was trying to engineer a Tamil Nadu kind of split in Odisha as well.
Satapathy’s unguided attack invited sharp criticism from lok Sabha member Baijayant Jay Panda, who recently alleged in an article that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has failed to curb corruption within the BJD.
“BJP hard at work to divide @bjd odisha in Parliament, maybe even in Assembly. They want AIADMK type split,” tweeted Sathpathy and thereafter shot off another saying “They want to take away @bjd odisha’s party name & symbol. Rumors afloat that only one MP will swing this deal for them. Ha!”
In an Odia newspaper article, Panda has indirectly accused Patnaik of failing to stem corruption within the BJD.
The MP from Kendrapada wrote in his article in the Samaj newspaper, “If we honestly introspect, we must acknowledge that all the above-listed allegations about the political environment in 1997, including widespread corruption and sheltering of powerful people committing criminal acts, are again being alleged about Odisha of the past three years.”
Responding to Satapathy’s indirect charges, Panda said he was just saying ‘what the party’s founder president had said. “I’ve done exactly what the party’s founder president publicly said we shd do. Can anyone point to anything inaccurateIJ,” Panda tweeted.
Alluding to the BJP’s good performance in Odisha’s recently held panchayat elections, Panda attributed the success to the ‘dynamic leadership of the BJP’ in his article.
“Other parties are gaining ground because of their dynamic leadership, and unless the BJD’s founder urgently deals with the issues outlined above, the party will struggle to face these challenges,” he reportedly said in the article.
Panda’s questioning of the leadership of Naveen Patnaik has not gone down well with the party leaders. Many senior leaders have sharply reacted calling for disciplinary action against him. Assembly polls are due in Odisha in 2019.
Baijayant Panda has been writing many things calling it his personal opinion. He is supporting BJP and writing against the BJD. It amounts to indiscipline. His high ambition is not unknown to anybody. The party will consider taking action.
The in BJD’s internal bickering came out in open in less than three weeks ahead of the BJP’s National Executive scheduled to be held in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, on April 15-16. The BJP had recently made inroads into BJD’s vote bank in the local elections.