Baijayant slams party colleague Nishikant Dubey’s remark on Biju Patnaik | India News
BJP MP Nishikant Dube’s alleged derogatory comments on former Odisha chief minister Biju Patnaik on Monday sparked outrage as his own party colleague Baijayant Jai Panda slammed the comments as “inappropriate, ill-informed and totally unacceptable”.Panda said, “Biju uncle was a towering figure…he was one of the greatest patriots of modern India. To cast doubt on his patriotism is extraordinary and frankly ridiculous.”In a post on X, Dubey called Biju a “nexus” between Jawaharlal Nehru and the US and its spy agency CIA, which, he alleged, funded the Congress. Although the post was part of his daily attack on the Nehru-Gandhi family, his reference to the Oriya leader was seen in the context of illegal election funding. BJD Patnaik indicated that he worked as a CIA agent.In Bhubaneswar, Naveen Patnaik, son of BJD founder and former chief minister of Odisha, Biju Patnaik, said Dube needed a “psychiatrist’s attention”.Slamming Dubey, Naveen said, “I don’t think he knows that Nehru gave Biju an office next to him in Delhi when he was still Chief Minister of Odisha to strategize and fight the Chinese during the Chinese conflict.”In the Rajya Sabha, the BJD staged a walkout after its member, Sasmeet Patra, filed a “protest against the derogatory, false and fabricated statements made by Dube against Biju”.Dubey later sought to cool the political temperature by hailing Biju as a leading freedom fighter whom the BJP has always respected, and claimed that he had made no allegations against him.
