Bhubaneswar: Baijayant 'Jay' Panda's friend Abhijit Iyer Mitra, who had accompanied the former MP on the controversial chopper flight on Saturday, has run into a fresh row for his derogatory posts about the sculptures of the 13th century Konark temple.

The post prompted angry reactions with the BJD on Tuesday demanding the arrests of Mitra and Panda.

Mitra angered the political brass, including the Congress and the BJD, here when he posted two separate videos on his Twitter handle. One of the videos had been shot on the temple premises.

Panda is in the eye of a storm for taking Mitra and a journalist, Aarti Tikoo Singh on a helicopter ride over the Sun Temple and the Puri Jagannath temple on September 15.

From the chopper, Mitra had videographed the Sun Temple and used derogatory remarks against the sculptures.

He had tweeted: "my special message to you from the Konark temple expressing my utter disgust at this monumental conspiracy against the Hindu Civilisation."

He posted on Twitter a video shot in the temple premises in which he said: "I am in the famous Konark Temple premises. This is not a temple but a h****e where people are h*****g. See these sculptures...Women with women - men with animals. Can this be a holy place? Not at all. This is a conspiracy against Hindus by Muslims who want to keep us down. Jai Sriram. In our new Ram temple, such obscene sculptures will not be there."

The uproar in Odisha over his remarks, however, appeared not to have bothered Mitra. He tweeted: "Happy to answer to anyone for my allegedly "distasteful" remarks. Says a lot about the abysmal intellectual Calibre of @Naveen_Odisha's MLA's the cant tell satire from seriousness. But why drag Jay Panda into something he didn't say? Pathetic."

The issue found an echo in the Assembly. Raising the issue in the House, leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra said: "Iyre shared a video in which he has made derogatory remarks against the art and sculpture of the Sun Temple. It has deeply hurt the sentiments of Odisha."

He said: "A well known politician of Odisha has helped him in this. According to Mitra's video, the naked sculptures at Konark Temple are against Hindu culture and he said this was Muslim culture. Moreover, he has also said that no such art will find place at the proposed Ram temple. The state government should immediately investigate into this and place a statement on the floor of the House. I also demand stringent action against such persons."

The BJD staged a dharna on the Assembly premises demanding action against Mitra. BJD MLA Sanjay Dasburma said: "We condemn and protest against the remarks of Abhijit Iyer Mitra on Konark Sun Temple. It has hurt crores of Odias. He also tried to foment communal feelings in the state. This is a conspiracy to defame Odisha before the rest of the world."

Panda, however, sprung to Mitra's defence and tweeted: "But wait, he was satirical, & was in fact praising our ancient culture, & SC ruling on LGBTQ rights*So now...er."