RS polls controversy: BJD-BJP remain on back foot

BJD and BJP, the ruling party and the principal Opposition in Odisha, continue to remain on the back foot over the controversy surrounding Rajya Sabha nomination of former bureaucrat Ashwini Vaishnav.

The ex-IAS officer was the candidate of the saffron party and was being backed by the Naveen Patnaik-led regional outfit. This had prompted the Congress, the third major player in the state politics, to accuse the ruling party and the principal opposition of having an “unholy nexus”.

What has further embarrassed the BJD-BJP combine is the Congress leaders’ fresh charge that both the parties were working at the behest of the “mining mafia” to nominate Vaishnav to the Upper House. If Congress leaders are to be believed, the former Odisha cadre IAS officer was part of mining companies which figured in the report submitted by the Shah Commission, which probed the mining scam on the direction of the Supreme Court.

The issue has already rocked the state Assembly, where the budget session is underway. Seldom in the history of Indian politics has the ruling party and principal Opposition in a state been on the same side of the fence over a controversial matter.

“I have documentary evidence of Vaishnav’s involvement with some mining companies which were named by the Shah Commission in its report,” the leader of the Congress legislature party, Narasingha Mishra, has said on record in the floor of the house.

The ex-bureaucrat, however, has denied the charges. “The allegations are untrue and baseless. I will give all details (on the charges) once the Rajya Sabha poll process is over,” he told reporters here. Both the BJD and BJP leaders have also denied the allegations made by the Congress.

“The Congress is trying to create an issue out of nothing,” said Debi Mishra, senior BJD legislator and vice-president of the regional outfit.