Bhubaneswar: State BJP is focusing on consolidating its support base in west Odisha, its traditional bastion, even as it struggles to break the BJD's stronghold in the politically sensitive coastal belt.

"There is no denying our desire to have a strong foothold on the coast but we consider it strategically more prudent to consolidate out position in west Odisha where we have a good presence. Eight out of our 10 MLAs in the Assembly are from this region," said the party's Padamapur MLA Pradeep Purohit.

BJP national president Amit Shah had toured Kalahandi and Balangir, considered the political nerve centres of west Odisha, in April addressing public meetings and holding closed-door interactions with party leaders and workers to gear them up for the next elections that are barely a year away.

Purohit said the party would seek to highlight pertinent issues such as farmer suicides and lack of irrigation facilities in the western districts, some of which are part of the KBK belt infamous for droughts and starvation deaths.

"The region is lagging behind even in the field of health care with hospitals wallowing in neglect and doctors playing truant. With unemployment rampant, migration of labour has become an annual phenomenon in Kalahandi and Balangir districts. The government has done nothing for the people here," said the legislator who has been organising meetings in blocks and panchayats to mobilise people on these issues.

Kuchinda MLA and party's Scheduled Tribe Morcha chief Rabinarayan Naik accused the state government of according step-motherly treatment to west Odisha.

"The region's demand for a high court bench has not been conceded. They have set up a west Odisha development council but its head office is based in Bhubaneswar. That shows the kind of importance they attach to this area," he said adding that his party would turn the issue into a major poll plank in 2019.

BJD general secretary Bijay Nayak denied the allegations of the BJP leaders asserting that his party stood for regional balance with its government according equal importance to all the areas as far as developmental initiatives were concerned.

"They are trying to make an issue out of a non-issue to extract political mileage but they will not succeed," he said.

Kid drowns

An eight-year-old boy drowned while bathing in a pond at the back of his house in Nandol village in Raghunathpur police limits in Jagatsinghpur on Saturday, police said. Dushmanta Behera drowned when he slipped from the bathing ghat, the police said. A case of unnatural death had been registered in this connection.