Dikhyaa Mohanty 
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday asked people to overthrow the current government and assist in forming Odisha’s first BJP government in order to expedite the growth and restoration of the state’s language and cultural grandeur, referring to Chief Minister Neveen Patnaik’s term since 2000 as the “lost years.” Speaking at his maiden rally in Odisha before the concurrent Lok Sabha and assembly elections, Shah stated, “Some people are studying the development of all states in the country.” Sonepur is about 275 km from Bhubaneswar.They had approached me. I enquired about the state of the nation and the situation in Odisha. They claimed that the roughly 20 years of Naveen Babu’s government were wasted years for the state. Odisha stays in its original location.
He said, “The govt here not only hindered the state’s progress but also allowed corrupt officials to distance Odisha from its linguistic and cultural heritage while states with BJP-led govts were scaling new heights of development.”
Shah’s scathing remarks against Naveen marks a departure for the party’s hierarchy and the first instance that a top central BJP leader has openly criticised the CM following the breakdown of alliance talks between the BJP and BJD, setting the stage for a high-voltage fight.
Declaring with confidence that the BJP will secure a majority in the Vidhan Sabha and form the government independently, Shah added that the party would win at least 20 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats and make a substantial contribution to the ‘400 paar’ dream. Sonepur, which is a part of the Balangir Lok Sabha seat but was purposefully placed to mobilize people throughout western Odisha, was the carefully picked location for the BJP’s first rally featuring Shah. By the way, Naveen is running from his second seat, Kantabanji, which is in the Balangir Lok Sabha segment.
The home minister, who was alluding to the launch of the Shree Mandira Parikrama (heritage corridor) project at that time, accused Naveen of attempting to deflect attention away from the opening of the Ram temple, about which the entire nation is proud. Shah claimed that in order to attract tourists, the government had diminished the significance of the holy site and pledged to rebuild Puri in a manner similar to the Kashi Viswanath temple in Uttar Pradesh.
Shah claimed that the state government attempted to hijack all federal programs by labelling them with its own stickers. He provided instances of how the PM Modi government’s Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, which provides housing, and the subsidised rice scheme were presented as state initiatives. The top BJP leader chastised Naveen for not putting the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana into action because he thought it would make Modi even more popular. Shah questioned how, in spite of Odisha’s abundance of water and mineral resources, its citizens were still leaving the state in search of employment. “World-class industries, investments, and irrigation for the entire farmland will be ensured by a double-engine government,” he declared, pleading with the public to give the BJP a chance to make Odisha the most prosperous state in India.
