The Biju Janata Dal’s opposition to the farm Bills in Parliament is said to have come as a jolt to the BJP leadership which had entrusted Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan and BJP RS MP Aswini Vaishnav to liaison and ensure support of the regional party.
Yesterday’s development has created a flutter in political circles here . It is amply clear that the BJP did try its best to elicit support of the BJD and had engaged its leaders to manage the regional party.
Reliable sources said Aswini Vaishnav , bureaucrat turned BJP MP who was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Odisha with the support of the BJD was the most worried among the three. Goyal is believed to have told some of the BJD MP’s yesterday that he had repeatedly telephoned chief minister Naveen Patnaik and a powerful bureaucrat in Odisha but they did not respond to his calls.
The BJD MP’s said they will abide by their party high command’s decision which , in this case , is to oppose the farm Bill. Some of the BJD MPs retorted saying that the BJP Central leaders had, in all these years, never bothered to talk or seek their views, instead they had all along secured directive from Bhubaneswar.
Opposition to the Bill will strain the excellent relationship between the BJP and BJD, Goyal had remarked while Pradhan held the view that misleading feedback on farmers’ protest in Odisha had been given to the CM.
The interaction speaks volumes of the ‘working relationship’ between the BJP and BJD, the role of leaders like Pradhan, Vaishnav and the mock aggression of the BJP at the state level where it is the principal Opposition party.
BJP MP Suresh Pujari, charged that the BJD wanted a ‘give and take’~ give us protection from CBI raids and scams in lieu of our support in Parliament.
BKU protest
Farmers in as many as twelve districts of western Uttar Pradesh came out opposing the controversial agriculture bill of Modi government on Monday . The protest was on the call of Bhartiya Kisan Union ( BKU). A similar protest was also staged by Samajwadi Party .
Supporting of the farmers of Punjab and Haryana who had been protesting against the agriculture Bill of the Modi government, BKU leaders and supporters demonstrated and sat on a dharna at the offices of tehsil and District Magistrate in Meerut Saharanpur, Baghpat, Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Bulandshahar, Hapur, Sambhal, Amroha, Rampur, Bijnor.