CM Under House Arrest, Claims Former Odisha MP While Hinting At Another Midnight Coup

Baripada: Launching a broadside against 5T secretary VK Pandian, former MP and senior BJP leader Laxmum Tudu on Thursday claimed that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is currently under house arrest.

“Taking advantage of his simplicity, age and health condition, he (Pandian) has kept him (Naveen) under house arrest,” the former Mayurbhanj MP said while addressing a press conference in Baripada.

Tudu alleged that the 5T secretary has been lying about CM’s consent to his visits to different parts of the state. “How is it possible that the CM, who is visiting Mumbai and even Dubai, is unable to attend programmes across the state?” he asked.

He further claimed that another midnight operation will be carried out in the coming days as the 5T secretary is aspiring to become the chief minister of Odisha. This was in obvious reference to the coup engineered in BJD by Pyari Mohan Mohapatra, who was then the chief advisor of Naveen, while the latter was on his first overseas trip to London after becoming the Chief Minister in 2012.

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The BJP leader further said that Tamilians are ruling and looting Odisha. “Pandian looted mines in Mayurbhanj during his tenure as sub-collector. He is now auctioning the collector position of the district,” he alleged.

BJD MLA Raj Kishore Das dismissed the allegations as ravings of a madman. “The 5T secretary is also the private secretary of the chief minister and he is working as per the direction of the CM. So, there is no deviation from the democratic norms,” he said.

He further asked Tudu to refrain from making such remark that belittles the stature of a political leader.

Notably, Tudu resigned from BJD, alleging that senior leaders and actual party workers were side-lined and treated as foreigners in the party, and joined the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) in October 2018 before shifting allegiance to BJP ahead of 2019 elections.