This came two days after the party replaced Jena with Ganeswar Behera as the chairman of the Congress poll manifesto committee.FORMER UNION minister and senior Congress leader in Odisha Srikant Jena Sunday resigned from two party committees of which he was a member, days after he was removed as chairman of the party’s poll manifesto committee.
In an indication that he may soon quit the party too, Jena, 68, a four-time Lok Sabha MP and a political heavyweight in coastal Odisha, said he will expose the Congress for running politics through select families.
“I will go to every village in Odisha and expose the Congress for running politics through the Patnaik families and destroying the state,” he said in a press interaction after resigning from the Congress core committee and campaign committee.
Sources said Jena was possibly referring to relatives of former chief minister J B Patnaik. Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Niranjan Patnaik is a close relative of J B Patnaik by marriage. J B Patnaik’s son, Prithvi Ballabh Patnaik, is likely to enter politics ahead of the 2019 polls.
On Saturday, Niranjan Patnaik and party leader Taraprasad Bahinipati had slammed Jena for criticising the party’s state leadership. “He has questioned transparency in the Congress… He will soon find out about it,” Patnaik said.
This came two days after the party replaced Jena with Ganeswar Behera as the chairman of the Congress poll manifesto committee.
Jena had upped his criticism of the state party leadership by announcing plans to seek a referendum on the kind of leaders people wanted. He shot off a letter to AICC in charge of the state Jitendra Singh saying, “Do you disagree with selecting top political leadership from among OBC/SEBC, SC, ST communities who form 92% of the state’s population?”
