Embarrassment for Odisha ex-CM Naveen Patnaik: BJD veteran dares him to speak on current mess in party

By A Iswar Rao

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 17: Amar Prasad Satpathy, one of the founder members of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), continues to embarrass the party’s president and former chief minister Naveen Patnaik saying that the latter must clarify if V Karthikeyan Pandian, a former bureaucrat and his aide, still calls the shot in organisational affair.

“When the BJD was formed, we had elected Naveen Patnaik as our leader. Many of the BJD leaders now blame V Karthikeyan Pandian for the BJD’s poll debacles that led to the party losing power in the state after 24 years. The BJD president must come clean on this contentious issue and address the concerns of the party leaders,” Satpathy said on Thursday.

Satpathy, a six-time MLA from Barchana constituency in Jajpur district, has kept himself away from the BJD activities ever since the party denied him a ticket to contest the assembly polls held early this year along with the Lok Sabha polls.

Sapathy informed that he did not renew his membership this year as he felt frustrated with the way the party was being run.

“We want a clear answer from the party chief Naveen Patnaik. However, some people who were nowhere the BJD was formed in 1997, are now questioning our loyalty and integrity. I take pity on their ignorance and audacity,” said Satpathy.

Lenin Mohanty, a BJD senior BJD spokesperson, had recently treated Satpathy’s discontentment over the current nature of functioning of the party as an act of anti-party activities. He even went to ask the veteran leader to quit the party if he felt “suffocated” in the organisational structure.

“If Amar Satpathy is feeling suffocated in the BJD, he must quit the party and refrain from making allegations and accusations against the leadership before the media,” said Mohanty.

Satpathy was quit to react to Mohanty’s ‘unsavoury’ remark, saying he did not attach importance to the latter as “he is quite immature in politics.”

Dozens of BJD leaders, including two Rajya Sabha members, have said good-bye to the BJD after it lost power to the BJP. The leaders who quit BJD alleged that party was being run “undemocratically” and if failed to walk its talk on “corruption-free” and “efficient” governance.

Satpathy, also on Thursday, predicted that two more Rajya Sabha members were contemplating to quit the BJD.

Earlier, two BJD Rajya Sabha members — Mamata Mohanta and Sujit Kumar — had quit the party and joined the BJP.