BJP takes to the street over Vedanta land scam

By Debdas Pradhan & Sikha Sashirekha

Bhubaneswar, Dec. 7: The Bharatiya Janata Party state unit on Tuesday took to the streets over Vedanta land scam by organising a massive public rally here demanding resignation of the chief minister.

Top BJP leaders, including state president Jual Oram and Legislature Party leader K.V. Singhdeo, fired salvos at the Naveen Patnaik government saying it was concerned more for “land grabbing” than “looking after” the interests of the common people.

State president Mr Oram, who is a bitter critic of the BJD supremo and chief minister Naveen Patnaik, said the latter mistook the mandate of the people as a license to do all “wrongs” and expected the people to accept them as “legally correct things.”

“The present government is behaving in an autocratic way. It mistakenly believes that the people’s mandate it has got is the license to all wrongs and expects us to accept them. It had promised to protect jal, jamin and jungle (water, land and forest), but unfortunately it is doling out these properties to private business houses. We just cannot keep our eyes closed to such blatant loot of our resources and protest it,” Mr Oram said.

BJPLP leader Mr Singhdeo said the selling out of Jagannath temple land by the ruling BJD to Vedanta University was blot on the Naveen Patnaik government’s face and “it just cannot erase this deliberate blunder.”

“The selling of Jagannath temple land by the ruling BJD is big blunder. The BJD leadership Mr Patnaik encouraged the government officials to flout all norms and laws to grab the temple land. This is high time he should resign from his post and face a probe to prove his honesty,” Mr Singhdeo said.

Biswa Bhusan Harichandan, who was the revenue and law minister in BJD-BJP coalition government when the Rs 15,000-crore Vedanta University project was cleared, said the BJD was so obsessed with the university project that it did not listen to the objections raised by the law department.

“The chief minister claims he is a great worshipper of law. Now that he faces allegations of corruption and nepotism in land acquisition deal, he should step down from his position and face an inquiry. But, he has turned down our demand as he is fully convinced that he would be up for a big trouble once he quits his post. However, the BJP will not take rest unless and until this man ousted from the chief ministership,” said Mr Harichandan.