Bhubaneswar, April 14: While voting of the BJD Parliamentarians in the Rajya Sabha on the Waqf Bill, has heated up the political landscape in Odisha, senior Party leader & Legislator Ranendra Pratap Swain has made the row even warmer on the Odia New Year, that is the Maha Bisuba Sankranti.
Athgarh MLA and former Cabinet Minister Swain has written a letter to the BJD Supreme Naveen Patnaik urging him to make the premier regional party stronger rejuvenating unity among the leaders.
In the letter Swain, has appealed the party chief to boost up unity and fraternity among all the leaders, with laying emphasis on protecting reservation system ensuring due representation of leaders from all social classes including women leadership.
Apart from it, Swain in his letter, raised concern over the divergent statements of handful BJD leaders, who are reportedly prompting debate and making the democratic ideals of the party public.
Thus, Swain urged the BJD chief not to let a few individuals ‘hijack’ the party and distort the social fabric deepening regional imbalance.
Beside the submission, Swain laid a 5-point charter before the BJD Supreme proposing robust organizational structure of the party upholding the democratic framework.
He suggested a protective reservation system that would provide appropriate representation from Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), minorities, and women in the party’s state, district, and block-level organizations with respect to the population database.
Underlining the Waqf Bill controversy involving the BJD a while ago, Swain suggested that the party must take a clear stand on the pivotal issue, to uphold secularism and social justice, the core values on which BJD was founded and won public affiliation & mandate for as many as 24 years.
The MLA also sought Naveen’s benign intervention to raise public & ethical issues more unitedly against the Odisha government to win people’s trust further.
Responding to the media persons on MLA Swain's correspondence to Naveen, BJD Coordination Committee Chairman Debi Prasad Mishra acknowledged the concerns raised by Ranendra Pratap Swain and said, “ Swain is a senior leader. Someone who has sincerely contributed to the party can raise such critical points. Only Raja Swain can mention what he exactly means to say about the 'hijack part' what he cited in his letter."
