Congress puts lawlessness blame on Naveen, asks him to quit

BHUBANESWAR: A day after two senior MLAs raised questions over the party’s decision to remain silent in the Assembly on the Nayagarh minor girl murder case, the Congress on Tuesday launched a counter attack by demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik over the deteriorating law and order situation.

“Serious lapses in the Assembly’s security system came to the fore during the recently concluded winter session. Under this condition, how will people of the State feel safe”, president of Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee Niranjan Patnaik told a media conference here. 

While referring to the four self immolation bids in front of the State Assembly, he said that the intelligence wing of the police has virtually collapsed and the Chief Minister should own moral responsibility for this.
Stating that crimes against women, missing of children, murder, rape and other criminal activities have increased in Odisha, Patnaik said that the Chief Minister has no interest in keeping the State peaceful. 

Though law and order and prevention of crime are the responsibilities of police, the government is yet to fill up 9,000 vacancies in the department, he said and added that accountability should be fixed for these lapses.

The OPCC president said that people of the State are not safe and police high-handedness has increased which came to the fore from the custodial deaths in Puri and Birmitrapur. He also came down heavily on the State government for its failure to arrest anybody in Nayagarh minor murder case. 

Stating that the court monitored SIT probe into the Nayagarh minor girl case will yield results, Patnaik said that CBI investigation usually gets delayed as has been seen in many cases. The family of the Nayagarh minor girl would not have got justice in case of a CBI probe, he said and added that Congress has been fighting to bring out the truth in this case and will continue to do so.