Baijayant slams party colleague Nishikant Dubey’s remark on Biju Patnaik

NEW DELHI: The political row sparked by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey’s allegedly derogatory comments on ex-Odisha CM Biju Patnaik flared up on Monday as his own party colleague Baijayant Jay Panda slammed the remarks as “unworthy, uninformed and totally unacceptable”.

Panda said, “Biju uncle was a towering personality... He was one of the greatest patriots of modern Bharat. Casting aspersions on his patriotism is fantastical and patently ludicrous.”

In a post on X, Dubey had called Biju a “link” between Jawaharlal Nehru and the US and its spy agency, the CIA, which, he alleged, used to fund Congress. Though the post was a part of a series of daily attacks he launches on the Nehru-Gandhi family, his reference to the Odia neta in the context of illicit poll funding was seen by BJD as an insinuation that Patnaik worked as a CIA agent.

In Bhubaneswar, BJD founder and former Odisha CM, Naveen Patnaik, the son of Biju Patnaik, said Dubey needs a “mental doctor’s attention”.

Slamming Dubey, Naveen said, “I don’t think he knows Nehru had given Biju an office next to his in Delhi while he was still Odisha CM to help with strategy during the Chinese conflict and fight the Chinese.”

In Rajya Sabha, BJD staged a walkout after its member, Sasmit Patra, lodged a “protest against the disparaging, false and concocted statements made by Dubey against Biju”.

Dubey later sought to bring down the political temperature by lauding Biju as a leading freedom fighter whom BJP has always respected, and claimed he had levelled no allegation against him.