BHUBANESWAR, Jan 28: The letter of Union Minister Srikant Jena to the Biju Janata Dal president Naveen Patnaik raking up controversial issues which bogged the Dal government headed by late Biju Patnaik between 1990 and 1995 has landed the party in a difficult situation.Criticism of Biju Patnaik government's functioning at this juncture, when the Janata Dal is fighting a bitter war over Biju legacy with the BJD, has jeopardised the electoral calculations of the party. The missile from Jena criticising several controversial decision of the Biju Patnaik government has come when the truncated Dal was trying to put its house in order.
In fact, the election strategy of the JD in Orissa was woven around the legacy of the late leader which the party is claming to have inherited.
The leaders of the UF including former prime minister H D Deve Gowda and West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu paid glowing tributes to Biju Patnaik at the Front's rally held at Bhubaneswar this month to kick off the campaign.Several senior Dal leaders maintained that Jena's letter had spoiled whatever chance the party had of exploiting Biju Patnaik's legacy during the elections. Sources said that several Biju loyalists and former ministers who are still in the JD have not taken Jena's letter lightly.
Besides questioning the commitment of the Janata Dal government to pursue corruption cases against Chief Minister JB Patnaik, the Union minister had also raked up several controversial deals during the period including the sale of the Bamanipal chargechrome plant to the Tatas.
The contents of the letter has come as a surprise for the Biju loyalists in the Janata Dal who are trying to project the party as the true inheritor of his legacy. Criticising Biju Patnaik or his family members would only give an anti-Biju character to the Janata Dal, they felt.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
