Bhubaneswar: State Congress president Niranjan Patnaik on Friday termed BJP president Amit Shah's "Mission 10 plus" in Odisha as "Mission 420".
Pujari made the remark in the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking the BJD's support to get his candidate elected as Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson.
Patnaik alleged that both the BJD and the BJP had been maintaining a close relationship even after breaking their alliance in 2009.
"Both of them have been staging a political drama and accusing each other to garner votes in the 2019 elections. They have started a mission to cheat Odia people for another five years," he told reporters here.
"During the last four and half years, Naveen has sided with Modi on almost all issues ranging from demonetisation, GST, President's election and the deputy chairperson's election was the latest in the series," he said.
Ridiculing the BJD's claim that they had supported the JDU candidate and not the BJP, the Congress leader said: "Why Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik or any of his cabinet colleagues did not attend the swearing in ceremony of Nitish Kumar a few months ago?"
While BJP state leaders and two Union ministers from Odisha have been criticising Naveen regularly, Modi has been silent on him and his government, he said.
Stating that it has been proved now that the Congress was the only Opposition party in Odisha, the PCC president invited all those who wanted to raise issues to protect the state's interest to come together.
Taking a dig at the secret deal between the BJD and BJP, senior Congress leader and former Union minister Srikant Jena had alleged that Naveen supported the NDA candidate as he was scared of a CBI probe into the deposit collection scam and other frauds.
He said that Naveen was also not confident to win the 2019 elections alone as an internal survey had indicated that 80 per cent of present MPs would lose.
Jena said fearing an electoral debacle Naveen had struck a secret deal with the BJP so that both would help each other in the coming Assembly and Lok Sabha polls.
