J B Patnaik blames lack of communication for RS debacle

Patnaik met party chief Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday amidst reports that he had offered to step down from the PCC presidentship, owning moral responsibility for the debacle in the Assembly elections in the State. When asked about this, Patnaik said cryptically, "I have met the party chief after the Assembly elections and have done what I had to do. I have also apprised her of the party’s situation in the State."

The former CM blamed the cross-voting in his State (in the Rajya Sabha elections) "due to the atmosphere of indiscipline in the state unit".

"Some people in the party were encouraged to cross-vote and money played a major role from the other side," he said, adding that the AICC general secretary in-charge is expected to look into the events which led to the defeat of the party-backed candidate, R K Naik. Of the 26 MLAs in Orissa, Naik managed to secure the votes of only 21.

Patnaik, however, said that the incidents of cross-voting did not reflect a challenge to the high command’s authority although the matter should be given due attention and proper action should be taken to avoid it in future.

On the concern expressed by senior party leaders recently on the dwindling fortunes of the party, Patnaik felt that no party could prosper without cohesion and without its authority being properly honoured. "The Congress is a democratic party which also believes in intra-party democracy… the high command must be fully aware of the issues raised by these leaders and these should be resolved soon," he said.

Patnaik denied charges made by his detractors in the state unit that he had forced Ramakant Mishra as the CLP leader since he was his candidate. "Mishra was unanimously elected by the MLAs after a consensus was reached on his name in the presence of AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad," he said.

Patnaik, who took over as PCC chief a couple of months before the Assembly elections, has been under attack from a section of the state unit led by former chief minister Hemananda Biswal for first packing the Assembly nominations with his men and then ensuring that the CLP leader was not from the tribal community.

The PCC chief, however, strongly denied these allegations, pointing out that most nominations for the Assembly were either unanimously approved by the Pradesh Election Committee (PEC) or were put before the Central Election Committee (CEC) for approval. "There is no hard and fast rule that if the PCC chief is a non-tribal, then the CLP leader has to be from the tribal community. Before the Assembly elections, the Chief Minister as well as the PCC chief were from the tribal community."