Bhubaneswar, July 23: Chief minister Naveen Patnaik may frown upon it, but ruling Biju Janata Dal leaders are no more shying away from washing their dirty linen in public.
The latest to engage in a no-holds-barred slang match are revenue minister Surya Narayan Patro and his former cabinet colleague, Paradeep MLA, Dr. Damodar Rout. Both are among the seniormost leaders of the party.
The war of words triggered by a report in a local Oriya daily that quoted Patro extensively turned distinctly ugly today with Rout asserting that the revenue minister was one of the leaders who had distributed copies of the vigilance case against Orissa’s legendary leader, Biju Patnaik, father of Naveen, in 1996 when a United Front ministry headed by H. D. Deve Gowda was formed at the Centre.
Rout also accused Patro of being a power seeker and said that he never had anything to do with the effort to make Biju Patnaik the first Oriya Prime Minister of the country, though the dream never materialised. Patro retorted saying that Rout, who was dropped from the cabinet during the last reshuffle, had lost his mental balance.
Rout was obviously provoked by the Oriya daily report, which quoted Patro as saying that the former agriculture minister was paying the price for not heeding to his good advice of keeping away from controversies. The revenue minister, according to the report, also boasted about having played a role in getting Srikant Jena, presently minister of state for chemical and fertilisers at the Centre, a cabinet berth in the Deve Gowda ministry in 1996.
This, incidentally, is not the first instance of ruling BJD leaders engaging in acrimonious exchanges embarrassing the party leadership. Rout had famously locked horns with BJD second-in-command, Pyari Mohan Mohapatra, a few months ago challenging his stand on the party assessing the performance of ministers. Mohapatra had retorted recalling Rout’s stint as a veterinarian before joining politics. The slang match proved to be the undoing of Rout who was axed by the chief minister, who also cautioned party leaders against washing their dirty linen in public.
The advice, however, went unheeded as soon after this episode Kashinath Mallick, Daspalla MLA, and Rudramadhan Ray, BJD MP from Kandhmal, engaged in recriminations.
The MLA, who accused Ray of making casteist remarks against him, still bears a grudge against the MP.
Naveen also had to face public embarrassment when Bari MLA and former minister, Debashish Nayak, accused him of leaning a bit too heavily on Pyari Mohan Mohapatra, who had emerged as a parallel power centre in the BJD.
The chief minister, who suspended Nayak from the party forthwith, sought to clear the air asserting that he was the sole power centre in the party.
