Patnaik chairs BJD meeting on VP polls

Bhubaneswar: BJD president Naveen Patnaik Saturday chaired a meeting of the party’s highest decision-making body, the political affairs committee, on the September 9 vice presidential polls.

At the meeting, Patnaik asked the opinion of each member, whether to support the NDA candidate or the INDIA nominee or to stay neutral, party sources said.

“All of us have given our views to him. The final decision will be taken by him keeping in view the interest of the state and its people,” BJD chief whip in assembly Pramila Mallik told reporters outside Patnaik’s residence.

The BJD’s political affairs committee comprises 10 senior members of the party. The BJD, which supported the BJP at the national level over the last few years during such elections, is in a fix after losing power in the state.

It is now the principal opposition party in the state, with the BJP ending Patnaik’s uninterrupted 24-year tenure as the CM in last year’s Assembly polls. The BJD abstained from the 2012 vice presidential polls, in which Hamid Ansari won.

It backed non-NDA candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi in the 2017 polls, in which Venkaiah Naidu was elected. In 2022, it supported NDA candidate Jagdeep Dhankar.

The polls were necessitated after Dhankhar resigned from the post in July.

BJD has only seven MPs in the Rajya Sabha and none in the Lok Sabha.

Mallik said that apart from the vice president elections, the meeting discussed issues to be taken up during the monsoon session of the Assembly, which will begin September 18.

PNN

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