Bhubaneswar: A day after Odisha BJP president Manmohan Samal ruled out any truck with BJD, the saffron party’s election in-charge for the state Vijaypal Singh Tomar on Saturday said that no alliance talks have been held with the regional outfit for the upcoming polls.
Speaking to reporters, Tomar said that no leader of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) met him in New Delhi where top brass of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was busy chalking out strategies for the upcoming Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Odisha. “If alliance discussions have taken place, such talks with BJD are neither in my knowledge nor we have been told about it.”
Asserting that BJP is making all preparations to fight the elections alone in the state, he said that no discussion took place regarding any alliance in Odisha.
Claiming that BJP will win more than 80 Assembly and over 16 Lok Sabha seats in Odisha, Tomar said there was no discussion in the party about an alliance with BJD as it wants to go to polls alone. “We are preparing to fight all 147 Assembly and 21 Lok Sabha seats in Odisha,” the senior BJP leader said.
Regarding talks about BJP-BJD alliance, he said people should ask those who floated the idea of an alliance.
It may be noted here that BJD leaders V K Pandian and Pranab Prakash Das flew to New Delhi on Thursday evening for seat-sharing talks with BJP.
However, Tomar denied having met the two BJD leaders, saying that nobody from the regional party met him in Delhi. “If anybody had met with our senior central leaders, they would have informed me,” he said.
