Tag: Bjd

By Sandeep Sahu It is obvious now. After its stupendous victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and commendable show in Manipur, the BJP is now convinced that Odisha is a ripe fruit waiting to be plucked. The decision to hold the party’s national executive here in Bhubaneswar in mid April, announced by the Union Petroleum […]

  By Sandeep Sahu It is amazing how a moment of indiscretion can spoil a lifetime of good work. No one would agree with this more than Pyari Mohan Mohapatra, the man who has had more epithets coined for him than any other politician in Odisha. In an interview to a TV channel three years […]

By Sandeep Sahu All eyes are now fixed on March 11, the day the votes cast in the just concluded Assembly elections will be counted. While the Congress and AAP have a lot at stake in the outcome of polls in Punjab and Goa, it is the results of the polls in Uttar Pradesh that […]

By Sandeep Sahu What a turn-around it has been! In five days flat, the BJD, which deluded itself – and persuaded many others to believe likewise – that it is destined to rule till eternity, has been yanked off the high pedestal it had perched itself on and brought down to the ground with a […]

By Sandeep Sahu Everyone knows it is a blatant lie, but no one really seems to mind. The lie that panchyat elections are ‘not fought on party basis’ has been perpetuated for far too and it is high time it was given a decent – and permanent – burial. Of course, there are other myths […]

By Sandeep Sahu The ‘unofficial’ seat count in the first phase zilla parishad election given by television news channels on Monday evening varied widely. If Kalinga TV showed the BJD winning 120 out of the 188 zilla parishad zones that went to polls earlier in the day, News 7 gave the ruling party winning no […]

By Sandeep Sahu He fits the expression ‘an enigma wrapped in a mystery’ like very few politicians in Odisha do. It is hard to think of another neta who remains relevant without being a minister, a party chief or even an MLA. In fact, he has not seen the inside of the Assembly in the […]

By Sandeep Sahu Come election time and suddenly, cine stars are in great demand. As per a well-established tradition, the most sought after among them invariably head for the party in power with the opposition having to make do with second and third rung stars and starlets from tinsel town. It was no different when […]

By Sandeep Sahu A rider at the outset. As of now, the BJD, the ruling party in Odisha, is going strong and there is nothing to suggest that its love affair with the people of the state could sour any time soon. But the ongoing tug-of-war for control of two major regional parties currently in […]

By Sandeep Sahu Ah, the sheer helplessness of the hapless citizen! The man who arrived in the state capital in the morning after a long-distance, all-night bus journey only to find that there are no taxis or auto rickshaws around to take him to his destination.The family that alighted from the train after a long […]

By Sandeep Sahu Nothing sells like sleaze. But when sleaze combines with crime and politics, it makes for an explosive concoction. And that is precisely what we have been witnessing for four days at a stretch now. The sex video allegedly featuring BJD leader and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena and its […]

By Sandeep Sahu The ongoing CBI investigation into the multi-thousand crore chit fund scam is fast turning out to be a theatre of the absurd. More than a year after it last questioned Balasore MP Rabindra Jena and Laxmibilasini Biswal, wife of Choudwar-Cuttack MLA Pravat Biswal, in connection with the Seashore case, the agency suddenly […]

By Sandeep Sahu It is clear that AICC general secretary in charge of Odisha BK Hariprasad was engaged in a desperate exercise in damage control when he said that Lalatendu Biduyadhar Mohapatra – Lulubhai to his legion of supporters – was offered the post of PCC president, but declined on ‘health grounds’. Having seen the […]

By Sandeep Sahu It is no secret that politicians are held in extremely low esteem by most people in the country. And Monday provided yet another instance – if one was needed at all – why they are such a despised lot. The occasion was Union Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s visit to Malkangiri, which has […]

By Sandeep Sahu Residents of Odisha’s capital city have long got used to effigies of some political leader or the other being burnt by a group of people on the streets on the city. But on Monday, eyebrows were raised when the effigy of Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak, who resigned as Health minister of the state […]