Bhubaneswar, June 7: BJD vice-president and agriculture minister Damodor Rout today threw a challenge to Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, saying he would contest against him in the next elections irrespective of the constituency he chooses.

Pradhan is being projected as the BJP's chief ministerial candidate for 2019 polls.

"I will contest against him wherever he chooses to fight the election from," said Rout while addressing the BJD's executive meeting in Puri.

The minister came down heavily on the BJP, but his chief target was Pradhan. "I am really surprised to see that wherever there is a chief minister's poster, the BJP workers put up Pradhan's poster. Let him first prove himself by winning election in a ward, then only he can dream of becoming the chief minister," he said.

Rout said: "Pradhan cannot even win the election from his own village, forget winning an Assembly seat. Wherever he will contest, I will challenge him. The BJP is like a hyena, but it is trying to project itself as a tiger in the state."

Targeting Pradhan, Rout said: "As he speaks Hindi well and has gone to the Rajya Sabha taking the Bihar route, he has been included in the ministry."

Earlier in an interview to The Telegraph, Rout had also hammered the BJP, saying it was only a media perception that the BJP had outsmarted the BJD in the panchayat polls. He also cited the example of how the BJP had lost the polls in the Union tribal welfare minister Jual Oram and Dharmendra Pradhan's home turf at Sundargarh and Angul, respectively. In Oram's constituency, the BJD had pocketed all the seven zila parishad seats and in Pradhan's home block Palalhada, the BJD occupied the panchayat samiti and the neighbouring Kankadhada panchayat samiti.

Earlier in the day, the BJD also criticised the BJP for the death of six farmers at Mandsaur in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh in a police firing.

"This is inhuman and unfortunate. It clearly shows how concerned the BJP is about the plights of farmers. People will certainly raise the question when he visits Odisha on their party's programme. The BJP owes an explanation to the farming community," said BJD's spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Pratap Keshari Deb.However, the BJP today hit back to all the allegations. Its spokesperson Golak Mohapatra said: "Rout should remember how he had lost the elections from the two constituencies, which he had contested in 1995. Besides, all should be proud that Pradhan is doing a lot of works for the cause of Odisha in New Delhi."

In another development, the BJP women's wing also stepped up attack on the Naveen Patnaik government. The party's women wing president Pravati Parida said: "We will organise 100 meeting between June 26 and July 26 across the state to expose the Naveen Patnaik government as well as educate the people how the Modi government has taken a number of steps for their overall welfare."