Bhubaneswar, April 2: Chief minister Naveen Patnaik's Odia has come under attack from his former confidant and Odisha Jan Morcha leader Pyari Mohan Mohapatra, who claims to have done his bit to make his former boss learn what is supposed to be his mother tongue.

"I had given him (Naveen) an Odia book in 2000. But, he did not learn," Mohapatra, a Rajya Sabha member, told a private TV channel here. The bureaucrat-turned-politician, who ran the BJD on behalf of Naveen till they fell out in 2012, said the chief minister appeared to think that Odias suffered from an inferiority complex and he would lose his grip on them if he learned the language.

This is not the first time that the septuagenarian leader, who had served as the principal secretary to Naveen's father Biju Patnaik, has targeted the chief minister's Achilles heel. He has been taking potshots at Naveen on this account since parting ways with him four years ago in the wake of a failed coup attempt against the chief minister.

Mohapatra aimed his Odia barb at Naveen in the wake of latter's criticism by his own party MP Baishnab Parida for failing to make Odia the state's official language. Incidentally, the Rajya Sabha terms of both Parida and Mohapatra, who was also elected to the Upper House on a BJD ticket, are coming to an end in July.

Student wing leaders of the state Congress also staged a demonstration protesting against Naveen's poor knowledge of Odia. Some of them, including students' Congress president Itish Pradhan, were detained near Naveen Nivas.

Sources said protests on the issue were likely to intensify, while the chances of Mohapatra being in focus because of his anti-Naveen statements were not being ruled out. Political grapevine has also been set abuzz with Union minister of state for petroleum and natural gas Dharmendra Pradhan and state Congress president Prasad Harichandan calling on Mohapatra at his Shaheed Nagar residence here yesterday.

Though Mohapatra described the visits as courtesy calls, the buzz in the political circles is that new political equations may be in the offing.#

While the two Opposition parties could gain immensely from the insider information that Mohapatra has on the BJD because of his long association with the party, the latter, too, might be interested in exploring new options as his Rajya Sabha term is coming to an end.