Bhubaneswar: Only a regional party, and not national parties, will be able to do justice for the aspirations of youths of Odisha, BJD supremo and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Friday said.
“The national parties will make the youth small drops in their vast ocean. But we are not drops in the ocean. Rather we are the ocean,” Patnaik said while addressing the first executive body meeting of Biju Yuva Janata Dal here. Patnaik inaugurated the meet digitally.
Coming down heavily on state-level leadership of national parties, Naveen said that they will never raise their voice for protecting the state’s unique heritage. “The Congress governments in the state were remote-controlled from Delhi. Similar is the case with the BJP governments in other states,” pointed out the Chief Minister.
“These leaders’ job is limited to impress the national leadership so that they can get crucial posts or ministerial berth,” he observed.
Referring to their strategies, he informed the gathering that the national parties always have a mainstream agenda which religiously revolves around uniform language -Hindi, uniform culture, uniform policies which will appeal to the large populous states and then impose the same across the country ignoring the unique identity of certain populations.
Pointing out how Odisha is being treated step-motherly, Patnaik said, “We have been fighting for the water of Mahanadi. We have been fighting to get classical status to Odissi music. We have been fighting for the inclusion of Kosali and Ho languages in the 8th Schedule. We have been fighting for the benefits of our mineral riches to come to the State and it’s people.”
“Almost every year Odisha faces a natural calamity of humongous proportions. It is because of our unique location in the neck of the peninsula. We suffer hugely for these catastrophic events, very frequently. This is why we have been fighting to get Special Category Status to Odisha. Both the National parties – BJP and Congress had kept Special Category Status as their number one manifesto point. After elections every time they conveniently forgot it. However, BJD will continue to fight for it,” he pointed out.
PNN