BHUBANESWAR, January 23: Senior leader of the Biju Janata Dal Anang Uday Singhdeo today boycotted the meeting of the political affairs committee of the party deepening the crisis over seat allotment.Singhdeo, a founder member of the regional outfit, had yesterday tendered his resignation from the posts of senior vice-president and member of the PAC. Efforts by senior BJD leaders including president Naveen Patnaik to persuade Singhdeo to take back his resignation have failed.
Sources said that Patnaik today met Singhdeo in the latter's residence. But Singhdeo is understood to have politely declined to take back his resignation.
However, the secretary general of the party Prasanna Acharya and PAC member Kamala Das attended the meeting. While Acharya is unhappy over the way negotiations were conducted at Delhi for seats, Das was an aspirant for the Balasore Lok Sabha seat which went to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Meanwhile, eight party MLAs demanded a detailed discussion over the issue in the party
forum and renegotiation of seats with the BJP. Dashing off a letter to the party president Naveen Patnaik, the legislators expressed strong resentment and dissatisfaction over the matter. They said that they were shocked and surprised to know that the BJD has conceded almost the entire seats in Western Orissa to BJP. "We do not understand under which circumstances and with what reasoning the Bolangir seat was donated to the BJP, when it was very clear in the beginning that AU Singhdeo, one of the founder leader of our party and main architect of BJD-BJP alliance was to fight from Bolangir", they added.
They alleged, there was a strong feeling among the workers and people that to retain the influence of coastal Orissa over the political scenario, the party interest in other areas were sold out.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
