Bhubaneswar, June 16: The BJP today began its two-day national executive committee meeting of its Scheduled Tribes Morcha here in an attempt to strengthen its grip on the tribal people, who constituted nearly 23 per cent of the state's population.
The meeting comes after the appointment Droupadi Murmu, a tribal leader, as the governor of Jharkhand. Last week, the party had inducted former chief minister Giridhar Gamang, who was once the Congress's tribal face. The Union minister for tribal affairs Jual Oram is the only BJP Lok Sabha member from the state and has been aggressively espousing his party's cause in Odisha.
The BJP, which had contested two general elections as the junior ally of the BJD, had contested most of the 33 seats reserved for scheduled tribes in the 147-member Assembly and five seats in the Lok Sabha.
At the conference, president of the BJP Janjati Morcha Fagun Singh Kulaste admitted that the party's base in the state was weak at the moment. "We are making efforts to strengthen the base."
The party was consolidating its base in the tribal areas, as evident from the fact that it had won 33 of the 47 Lok Sabha seats reserved for tribal people.
The BJP Janjati Morcha executive decided to spread the achievement of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre and the failures and "anti-tribal" policies of the Naveen Patnaik government.
Union tribal affairs minister Jual Oram, said his ministry had released grants amounting to Rs 421 crore to Odisha. "However, the state government has failed to utilise these funds and is spending the money for other purposes," he said.
Oram claimed that the Modi government was attaching importance to tribal leaders and had allotted five important portfolios to them.
The morcha's state unit president and MLA Rabi Narayan Naik said the tribal students of the state were not getting their stipends on time as the grants were being diverted for other purposes.
Veteran tribal leader Gamang, who joined the BJP last week, was, however, not seen at the meet. Party sources said he would be formally joining the party in the state this week.
Incidentally, the newly appointed Jharkhand governor Droupadi Murmu, a tribal leader from Mayurbhanj, has been in the city for the past two days. She had attended a few meetings across the state. Yesterday, Murmu called on chief minister Naveen Patnaik at his residence, triggering allegations of a violation of protocol.
The BJD government also has been trying to consolidate its base among the tribal people. Soon after Murmu's appointment as the governor, the BJD had named the proposed government medical college at Baripada after well-known Santhali scholar Raghunath Murmu.
It has also decided to launch a special scheme with an outlay of Rs 795 crore to ensure livelihood support for 62,000 primitive tribal households of the state.
