Prospects brighten for BJP tie up with 3 smaller Odisha parties

Odisha Sun Times Bureau

Bhubaneswar, Mar 2:

A day ahead of the arrival of senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley and the party’s Odisha in-charge Chandan Mitra, the prospects of the saffron party having an alliance with some of the smaller and newly launched parties have brightened considerably.

If BJP sources are to be believed, an alliance with at least three parties – Kharavela Swain’s Utkala Bharat , Soumya Ranjan Patnaik’s Ama Odisha and Braja Kishore Tripathy’s Samata Kranti – is as good as sealed.

BJP national general secretary Dharmendra Pradhan indicated as much when he said; “There is certainly a need for an alliance with some parties to maximise the gains in the state. But the parties must believe in the leadership and policies of the BJP and the NDA for an alliance to be forged.”

Swain went a step further. “I am quite hopeful that an announcement will be made about which parties will be part of the alliance and how many seats each of them will contest during the visit of Mr. Arun Jaitley and Mr. Chandan Mitra,” the former BJP MP from Balasore said.

Tripathy was rather evasive and non-committal. “There is no harm in talking to anybody. But there is no question of sacrificing our core beliefs and policies for the sake of an alliance,” the former Union minister said.

The stiff resistance to the entry of the Pyari Mohan Mohapatra led Odisha Jana Morcha, however, continues unabated in the state BJP.