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Journalism of Courage
BHUBANESWAR, June 20: The Biju Janata Dal BJD, in turmoil after its candidate8217;s defeat in the Rajya Sabha election, plunged into a crisis today after party chief Naveen Patnaik suspended five prominent MLAs for anti-party activities.
After a day-long deliberation on Friday, Patnaik cracked the whip early on Saturday by suspending Bijoyshree Routray, Surya Narayan Patra, Bishnu Das, Kalpataru Das and Prabhat Tripathy. The action against the dissidents came soon after Naveen Patnaik was authorised at a high level organisational meet on Friday night to take appropriate action to check growing indiscipline in the BJD.
All the five MLAs are supporters of Bijoy Mahapatra, the chairman of the Political Affairs Committee PAC who is at loggerheads with Naveen Patnaik on several issues.
Sources revealed that Patnaik is now contemplating to dissolve the PAC of the party and reconstitute it. Besides, he is also understood to have decided to ask all the office-bearers of the party to resign to give him a freehand to revamp it.
Naveen has decided to form a core committee to formulate policy decisions and monitor the functioning of the party. The core committee would be the supreme policy decision-making body of the organisation. A disciplinary committee has also been formed. The committee is headed by Ramchandra Sethi, MLA. The other members are Sachidananda Dalal, Raghunath Hembrum, Braja Kishore Tripathy, MP, and Bhaskar Rao.
Sources said Naveen Patnaik did not heed the advice of leader of the Opposition Ramakrushna Patnaik to go slow on the matter. Several other leaders including Bijay Mahapatra had demanded that a committee should be set up to investigate whether there was any cross voting from the BJD.
Naveen8217;s action is seen as a move to clip the wings of Bijay Mahapatra. Mahapatra8217;s group had opposed the nomination of A U Singhdeo as the Rajya Sabha candidate. The last 48 hours witnessed hectic political activity in the BJD camp with the loyalist and dissidents charting out their next course ofaction.
The high level meeting convened on Friday night by Naveen Patnaik to review the Rajya Sabha polls was attended by only 16 of the 27 MLAs. Mahapatra and Ramakrushna Patnaik were conspicuous by their absence.
