Jena vows to crush Congress, BJP

BHUBANESWAR, Dec 16: Shocked by the decision of the breakaway unit of Orissa Janata Dal Members of legislative Assembly led by Ram Krushna ...

BHUBANESWAR, Dec 16: Shocked by the decision of the breakaway unit of Orissa Janata Dal Members of legislative Assembly led by Ram Krushna Patnaik, owing allegiance to son of late JD leader and chief minister Naveen Patnaik, the leaders of the State unit of Janata Dal have hurriedly planned a mahasamavesh by the United Front here on January 5.

It would be the first election-related rally to be jointly organised by the Dal and its two left allies-CPI and CPM, disclosed Union Parliamentary Affairs and Tourism Minister, Srikant Jena. The leaders of the three party had a preliminary discussion in this regard today and are to likely meet in a few days for its preparation, he said.

According to him, former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, Union Railway Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Dal president Sharad Yadav, chief ministers of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Assam Jyoti Basu, N Chandrababu Naidu, Prafulla Mahanta respectively would address the mahasamavesh.

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Jena, who sounded perturbed over the latest development in the Dal, however, asserted the United Front would contest all the 21 seats in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in the state. “We are in touch with Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and Samajwadi Janata Party (SJP) for poll pact and are hopeful of a positive outcome,” he said. The Union Minister described as “most unfortunate” the decision of the rebel Dal legislators to float a regional party and have a poll tie-up with Bharatiya Janata Party. “I will again appeal my friends to rethink over the issue and return the Dal.”

Jena, whose gameplan for the ensuing election is yet to be understood by anybody, told the The Indian Express he would “prefer to keep everybody guessing” from which constituency he would contest the next election. There are wild speculations about his changing the constituency to either Puri or Jagatsinghpur from Kendrapada and that he, too, is keen on a BJP support to register his fourth successive win. He, however, said contesting election was not his priority.

“The first point in my agenda is to defeat the Congress-BJP conspiracy which destroyed my party in the state. I will take it up as a challenge,” he thundered. Meanwhile, senior Dal leader and former law minister Narasingha Misra was most acerbic in his accusation of the State leadership of doing little to persuade the party legislators not to go the rebels’ way.

“If there was a sincere effort, 29 legislators would not have joined the bandwagon.” The number would have been much less,” he said.