The war of words in the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) intensified today with the party’s Lok Sabha MP Baijayant Jay Panda attacking Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, alleging in an article in an Odia newspaper, albeit indirectly, that the latter has failed to stem corruption within the BJD.
A day after Panda and another BJD MP, Tathagata Satpathy, engaged in a Twitter spat over the issue of the BJP orchestrating a split within the party and signalling that not all is well in the 20-year-old party, the parliamentarian from Kendrapara wrote in an article in the Samaj newspaper,“If we honestly introspect, we must acknowledge that all the above-listed allegations about the political environment in 1997, including widespread corruption and sheltering of powerful people committing criminal acts, are again being alleged about Odisha of the past three years.”