BJD busy with "bayan bazi" while BJP prepares for 2019, says Bhartruhari Mahtab

BHUBANESHWAR: Despite Naveen Patnaik’s assurances it seems not all BJD politicians believe in the invincibility of the party.

In an editorial in the Prajatantra, a newspaper he edits, Lok Sabha MP and senior BJD politician MP Bhartruhari Mahtab warns against underestimating BJP’s chances in 2019. And against his party’s deviating from its stand to remain equidistant in the Presidential elections.

While the article, titled “BJP looking for new directions” essentially deals with the saffron parties pan-India ambitions a passing reference to his own party has raised a few eye brows raised.


The editor- politician writes the BJP will uses its all, “kala, bal, kaushala” or machinery, force and tricks. In Odisha the party has begun mobilizing cadre at the level of the state’s 36,000 booths. “This understandably has the BJP cadre enthused but the BJD is busy making one statement after another (“bayan baazi”) in Bhubaneshwar,” says Mahtab only revealing its weakness.

“No one is ready to assess, if the zilla parishad introspections have been effective in stitching the cracks in the party,” he adds.

Odisha is slated to go to polls with the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, when Naveen Patnaik’s two decade of rule will be tested. And the BJD will do so alone, says Mahtab. Keeping that in mind, Mahtab says, the BJD must not deviate from its policy of remaining neutral, in his Chief Minister words “equidistant to the Congress and the BJP”.

In his views, the BJD must maintain this neutral position and not support an anti- BJP Presidential nominee that the Congress is trying to get a consensus on among opposition parties.