Bhubaneswar: A couple of days after Naveen Patnaik-led BJD’s defeat in Odisha Assembly elections, several pictures and videos of BJD leader VK Pandian surfaced on social media where the IAS-turned-politician could be seen sitting inside a Vistara flight and walking with a trolley bag in his hand at an airport.
In one of the pictures that went viral Thursday, the IAS-turned-politician was seen onboard a Vistara flight.
In another video, Pandian can be seen walking with a trolley bag in his hand at an airport.
However, OrissaPOST could not verify the authenticity of the viral images.
However, netizens claimed that Naveen Patnaik’s close confidante Pandian left Odisha and flew to New Delhi after the crushing defeat of the BJD.
It can be mentioned here that Pandian’s whereabouts remained unknown after results were announced June 4 in which the BJD faced a shocking defeat at the hands of the BJP as the saffron party came to power in Odisha by winning 78 Assembly seats which comfortably surpasses the magic number of 74 in a 147-member Assembly.
The BJD was able to secure 51 Assembly seats while the Congress won 14 seats.
In Lok Sabha polls, BJD was unable to secure a single parliamentary constituency in the state.
Prior to the simultaneous polls in Odisha, Pandian accompanied by the party’s organisational secretary Pranab Prakash Das aka Bobby Das had been to New Delhi amid the talks of a BJD-BJP alliance. However, the speculations of an alliance came to an end after BJP state chief Manmohan Samal’s clarification regarding the saffron party’s solo plunge into the state elections.
PNN
