While speaking at a meeting with the newly-elected MLAs of his party, Patnaik said, "When I first became the CM, 70 per cent of the people of Odisha were living below the poverty line, which has now been reduced to 10 per cent. Our efforts in the agriculture and irrigation sectors and women'
He took a dig at former Odisha CM and said, "Naveen Patnaik has to take responsibility for the defeat of BJD because VK Pandian does not come out of the blue. It was his government, that ran under him, and therefore he should be held accountable."
Pointing out the electoral drubbings of the YSR Congress Party and the BJD, which, he said, were the B-teams of BJP, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday warned other regional parties against aligning with the BJP for they end up in the same fate.
After official trends by ECI showed that BJP is leading on 77 seats in the Odisha Assembly elections and 19 Lok Sabha seats, Odisha BJP vice-president Golak Mohapatra said that people of Odisha were fed up with current Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and have decided to move ahead with Prime Minist
Voting in Odisha concluded on June 1, along with the seventh and final phase of the Lok Sabha polls. The assembly polls in Odisha were conducted simultaneously along with the parliamentary elections.
Voting in Odisha concluded on June 1 with simultaneous polling for 146 Assembly constituencies and 21 Lok Sabha seats. In the last Assembly elections in 2019 in Odisha BJD won 112 seats followed by BJP in 23 seats and Congress winning nine seats.
Notably, the exit polls on Sunday predicted that the state is going to witness a neck-and-neck fight with the two-decade rule of Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal facing a stiff challenge from BJP.
After predicting a landslide win for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha polls in Odisha, the exit polls on Sunday predicted that the state is going to witness a neck-and-neck fight with the two-decade rule of Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal facing a stiff challenge from BJP.
The exit polls on Saturday predicted that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is expected to double its tally in Odisha in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said that BJD leader VK Pandian already has a firm "backdoor entry" in running Odisha and posed several questions including whether Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik physically signs any file or Pandian uses CM's digital signature.