Naveen Patnaik’s remarks came two days after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Bhubaneswar:
BJD president and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday launched a veiled attack on the BJP which lost the Karnataka assembly polls, saying it is good governance and not a ‘double engine’ government that can help a party win elections.
Mr Patnaik made the remarks during celebrations by the BJD, the party he heads, after its candidate’s victory in the Jharsuguda bypoll on Saturday.
Refusing to name any party, Patnaik said, “Single engine or double engine doesn’t matter. From people’s point of view, governance is important. Good governance and pro-people governance always wins.”
The BJP had made ‘double engine’ (BJP government in the state and the center) its slogan in Karnataka.
Mr Patnaik’s veiled criticism of the ‘double engine’ government is considered politically significant as the opposition BJP has long lured the people of Odisha with quick development if they bring the party to power in the state.
Earlier in the state, both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah had given statements in support of this.
Mr. Patnaik’s remarks came after his long silence on the BJP’s slogan of staying at the center in all assembly elections. The defeat of the saffron party in Karnataka seems to have provided him an opportunity to speak out against it.
Mr Patnaik has governed the state since 2000 after quitting the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and parting ways with the BJP in 2009. His comments come two days after he met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Thursday.
After the meeting, he reaffirmed his party’s policy of going it alone and maintaining equal distance from both the BJP and the Congress before the simultaneous Lok Sabha and Odisha assembly elections, at least in 2024.
The meeting with the prime minister in the national capital came barely 48 hours after Mr Patnaik met his old friend Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar, who called on him.
When asked, Mr Patnaik had said that as far as he was concerned, there was no possibility of a third front and the BJD would contest elections next year without any national ambition.
On Saturday, BJD candidate, 26-year-old Dipali Das defeated rival BJP candidate Tankadhar Tripathi by a margin of over 48,000 votes in Jharsuguda, where the bypoll was held after her father Naba Kishore Das, who was a minister in Naveen Patnaik’s cabinet. Cabinet, killed. Responding to Patak’s statement, Odisha BJP president Manmohan Samal said, “The chief minister is now talking about good governance in the state. Everyone knows how the government works in Odisha.”
“He (Patnaik) is also talking about ‘double engine’ because he knows that the BJP will form the government next time,” he claimed.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)