The BJP upped the ante against the Naveen Patnaik government in the state by describing it as anti-women and denouncing it for failing to protect women and children ahead of party president Amit Shah’s visit on Monday.

The party which is gung ho after Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised the state BJD government as corrupt and inefficient expects Shah to fire on all cylinders when he addresses the national executive of the Mahila Morcha at Puri.

“We were saying all along that the Naveen Patnaik government is corrupt and now that the PM has said so, it does have an impact and gains credence “ said BJP spokesperson Golak Mahapatra.

The build up to Shah’s visit was done by the party’s Mahila Morcha on Sunday with its president Vijaya Rahatkar lambasting the state BJD government as anti-woman. Women are not safe in Odisha, rape and crime against women has increased, she charged.

The Mahila Morcha state unit president Prabati Parida said the yatra organised by the state’s women’s wing recently had travelled over 9000 km and evoked a tremendous response from the people.

Ms Vijaya Rahatkar said the national executive meeting at Puri will lay down the road map for the women’s wing to canvass across the country on the innumerable pro-women measures initiated by PM Narendra Modi.

Right from beti bachao, beti padhao for the girl child, to the Ujjawala yojana, there are several schemes benefitting women across the country, she said. She informed that Union Ministers Jual Oram and Dharmendra Pradhan.

State BJP president Basant Panda and legislature party leader K V Singh Deo will also address the executive committee meeting at Puri on Monday.

Meanwhile, the charges traded by the PM and the CM on Saturday continue to hog the limelight. Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan dared CM Naveen Patnaik to visit any village with him and talk to women on the Ujjawala scheme. Let him see how it has worked wonders for women folk and let him prove one case of corruption in the scheme, he said.

It may be noted that the CM has referred to Ujjawala scheme scam and the Skill India scam on Saturday.

Pradhan pointed out that he had already entrusted a reputed Pune based institute to scrutinise the allegations of irregularities in the Skill India scheme.

The Union Minister pointed out that it was uncharacteristic of CM Naveen Patnaik to react in the manner that he did on Saturday. Evidently, the CM is rattled over what the PM said about his government, he quipped. In a related development here, former union ministers Bhakta Charan Das and Srikanta Jena held a press conference where they dubbed the PM’s speeches as full of falsehood. The projects that the PM inaugurated or laid foundation stones for were all initiated during the UPA regime they said.

Both questioned the PM’s silence over the Rafale deal. The PM held two public meetings, talked about corruption but did not mutter a word on the Rafale deal, they said. The PM ought to have explained why there was a four year delay in laying the foundation for the Talcher fertilizer plant revival project.

The revival package as well as the technology is the same as the one which was conceived and cleared by the UPA cabinet, said Jena while chiding that it took the NDA four years to lay a foundation stone. The four year delay meant cost escalation and raising doubts over viability, he said.