Bhubaneswar: Launching a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for avoiding Orissa’s concerns during his two-day visit to the city for the national executive meet, Opposition Congress and ruling BJD Monday said he (Modi) has disappointed the people of Orissa and has ignored Orissa’s interests.
“The Prime Minister often visits Orissa, but like every time this time also he has disappointed the people of Orissa. He arrived here amid much fanfare, attended the event which was organised by splurging huge amount of money and returned. However, he did not utter a single word about Orissa and its constitutional rights,” Orissa Pradesh Congress President Prasad Harichandan said while referring to Modi’s silence on state’s issues like special package, special category status and the raging Mahanadi dispute.
Hitting out at Modi for not taking concrete measures to resolve Mahanadi issue, Prasad alleged that the PM has undermined the legal rights of Orissa.
“In order to protect the interest of his party, which is in power in Chhattisgarh, he (the PM) has overlooked Orissa’s interest,” the OPCC chief said while demanding animmediate order asking Chhattisgarh to stop construction of barrages and dams on Mahanadi upstream and constitution of inter-state water dispute tribunal to resolve the issue. He also took a pot shot at Modi for his ‘poverty’ jibe and said, “Though he spoke about Orissa’s acute poverty in a rally in Uttar Pradesh, he and his party leaders forgot that Salia Sahi slum exists right behind the venue of BJP’s national executive meeting. There was no assurance regarding poverty alleviation.” Harichandan demanded CBI inquiry into the mining scam apart from expediting the central agency’s probe into the multi-crore chit fund scam in the state. Meanwhile, the BJD leaders also criticised the BJP for ignoring Orissa’s interest. Several ruling BJD leaders who attended observation of former CM Biju Patnaik’s 20th death anniversary at party headquarters here Monday evening, lashed out Modi for ignoring Orissa’s interests and termed BJP as a party of ‘hype’ and ‘propaganda’.
BJD MLA Bijay Kumar Mohanty, Pramilla Mallick, Ashok Panda, MP AU Singh Deo and others who attended the event strongly criticised Modi and BJP’s national executive meeting without uttering any name. Meanwhile, BJP leader Sajjan Sharma hit back at both Congress and BJD by holding them responsible for Orissa’s poor pace of development.
BJP leaders also alleged that it was Congress and BJD regimes that have pushed state’s development to the bottom.
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