Nadda urges voters to remove BJD govt

Berhampur: The BJP president, Jagat Prakash Nadda, on Sunday asserted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has changed the culture, nature and definition of politics in India, as he exhorted the people of Odisha to unseat the BJD government to usher in development. Nadda, while addressing an election rally at Ambapua here, said the BJP has ensured prosperity on all fronts and in every aspect during its tenure at the Centre in the last 10 years.

“Earlier, politics was about caste and religion, but PM Modi made sure that it is based on development... misrule has been prevailing under the BJD government in Odisha. It is establishing a ‘babu raj’ in the State,” he alleged.

“Is there no son of the soil to run the government in Odisha that we have to import people from other States,” Nadda asked, in an apparent reference to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s close aide V K Pandian.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik will be ‘’finished in this election’’ not by the BJP but by his aide V K Pandian, former Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb said on Sunday. Addressing an election rally in Berhampur, Deb said if the Chief Minister’s father Biju Patnaik were alive, he would have been hurt to see that the State was being run by an ‘’outsider’’.

“The people of Odisha have given you respect. But, you are not doing justice to them. Why will the elected representative not run the State? Did people vote for you so that Pandian runs the government?’’ he asked, targeting the Chief Minister.

‘’Naveen babu... not the BJP, Pandian will finish you in this election,’’ he added. Deb, a BJP Rajya Sabha member, said Odisha is rich in natural resources and has hard-working people. ‘’Then why would an outsider run the government? Is there not a single eligible person here to run the State?’’ he asked.

‘’Naveen has served the people, and I have respect for him and his late father. But now the time has come, Naveen should retire,’’ Deb said. He exhorted party workers to ‘’free’’ Odisha from an ‘’outsider’’. ‘’Hand Odisha to PM Narendra Modi for five years, he will make it the number one state,’’ he said.