Lok Sabha elections 2024: The Bharatiya Janata Party called off its alliance with Biju Janta Dal (BJD) in Odisha ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the saffron party’s state president Manmohan Samal said on Friday.
BJP will fight all 21 Lok Sabha and 147 Assembly seats in Odisha alone, Samal said.
Expressing gratitude to BJD chief and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government in “matters of national importance” for 10 years, Samal, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), said that in the saffron party’s experience, “double engine government” helps in accelerating development in states.
Calling off the alliance, the Odisha BJP chief wrote in Hindi: “For the last 10 years, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) party of Odisha, under the leadership of Shri Naveen Patnaik ji, has supported the Government of the Honorable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji in several matters of national importance, for this we express our gratitude to him.”
However, Samal said, “Experience has shown that wherever there has been a double engine government across the country, development and poor welfare work has accelerated and the state has progressed in every field.”
He then claimed that many welfare schemes of the Modi government are not reaching the people in Odisha, “due to which the poor sisters and brothers of Odisha are not getting their benefits.”
Samal expressed concern on issues related to “Odisha-identity, Odisha-pride and interests of the people of Odisha”. He said, “To fulfill the hopes, wishes and aspirations of 4.5 crore people of Odisha, to make a developed India and developed Odisha, BJP will win all the 21 seats of the Lok Sabha and all the 147 seats of the Legislative Assembly. Will contest the seats alone.”
A senior BJD leader had said on Monday that there has been no progress on talks of alliance with the BJP. The BJD has been discussing the selection of candidates for Lok Sabha seats and the Assembly seats. “We decided to prepare a list of candidates as there was no progress on the talks on the possible alliance with the BJP,” the leader had said.
A BJP team from Odisha, had been camping in New Delhi, holding meetings with its central leaders over seat sharing with the BJD for the past few days.
Discussions regarding the BJP-BJD alliance were on since PM Narendra Modi visited the state on March 5.
Lok Sabha elections 2024 and the assembly elections in Odisha will be held in four phases on May 13, May 20, May 25 and June 1.
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Published: 22 Mar 2024, 04:14 PM IST