Bhubaneswar January 5 : Senior leaders of the BJP came out all guns blazing against the BJD government over the brutal murder of party leader Kulamani Baral and his associate in Mahanga demanding immediate sacking of Law Minister Pratap Jena.BJP MP and national spokesperson of the party Aparajita Sarangi on Monday lashed out at Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for the rising crime and political murder in the State and utter failure of the government to prosecute the criminals.
While condemning the brutal murder of Kulamani and his associate Dibyasingh, Aparajita claimed that 17 cases of political murder have been reported since the last panchayat election and in none of the cases, the accused have been prosecuted.As many as 14 BJP workers were murdered during the last panchayat election due to growing intolerance of the BJD to the rising popularity of the saffron party in Odisha.
During the last Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, another senior leader Manguli Jena of Jankia was killed, she said.
Alleging that the chargesheets have not been filed in some of the cases till now, the BJP MP said she will examine the status of all the cases. “I will come to the media after 15 days to tell about the progress of all the 17 cases,” she promised.She came down heavily on the Chief Minister, who holds the Home department, for miserably failing in his duty to ensure safety and security to the people.
The insecurity among the BJD leaders is because the BJP has been successful in exposing the corruption of the government. Corruption in rural housing scheme under PMAY is rampant across the State. The Law Minister is in dock over the large-scale irregularities in Mahanga block, she alleged.
BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra tweeted, “Senior BJP leader Kulamani Baral of Mahanga was brutally hacked to death just because he spoke against the corruption of Minister #PratapJena in Odisha Govt. The minister’s name finds a mention in the FIR as well. Is Odisha going the Bengal way??”
State BJP general secretary Prithviraj Harichanda said the party will intensify its protest against the government from Tuesday. The youth wing of the party will gherao all the police stations of the State demanding resignation of the Minister. This will be followed by protest before the SP offices in all districts on Wednesday and gherao of DGP office on December 8, he added.
BJD refutes BJP charge
Bhubaneswar: The ruling BJD strongly refuted BJP allegation about growing number of political murders in Odisha. Odisha government has zero tolerance towards political violence and parties which are in power in other states with more incidents of political murders should not criticise, BJD spokesperson Chinmoy Sahoo told mediapersons. As per the ‘Crime in India 2019’ report of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), there was no political murder in Odisha during the year while West Bengal reported 12 followed by six each in Bihar and Jharkhand and four each in Karnataka and Punjab, he said. Referring to the double murder in Mahanga, Sahu said the exact reason behind the murder will be ascertained after the investigation as Cuttack Rural SP B Jugal Kishore has assured that no one will be spared and the accused will be apprehended. “BJD has never tolerated any kind of political violence and in the Mahanga case also, the guilty will not be spared,” he said.