Nayagarh: “Biju Janata Das will have a bigger role in the formation of the next government at the Centre as no national party is going to get majority in the upcoming elections”, said Odisha chief minister and BJD supreme Naveen Patnaik while asserting that his party would win all the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the coming elections.

Patnaik launched his party’s elections campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha and State assembly elections, here on Sunday.

Addressing a mammoth crowd of over 70,000 people, mostly women, the BJD supremo attacked the Centre’s Modi government for neglecting Odisha. He lamented that saffron party has failed in fulfilling its 2014 poll manifesto of according Special Category State(SCS) status to Odisha. Had Odisha been accorded SCS status more investment would had come to the state and more jobs were created. By hosting Make-in-Odisha, the state had lined up investment to the tune of Rs 5 lakh crore which would create job opportunities for 30 lakh youth.

Listing out the Centre’s neglects to the state, Patnaik said that Odisha get a small Rs 1000 crore from the Railways though the national transporter gets Rs 20,000 crore revenue per annum from the state. The people of the state get pollution due to coal mining while the Centre makes huge profit from the coal mines in Odisha.

The BJD supremo said that the state has been neglected by the Centre in Mahanadi and Polavaram issues. Odisha remains a backward state so far as National Highways, telecom and banking is concerned.

“I know the BJP leaders in the state can not raise this issues before their high command”, he said adding, “They can’t fight against the Centre”. Making a trenching remark he said, “They are being remote controlled by their high command.”

“BJD’s high command is the four and half crore Odisha people”, he said adding, “ They have the remote control of the BJD”.

The meeting was presided over by the Nayagarh BJD MLA and former minister Arun Kumar Sahoo. Puri MP Pinaki Mishra, Rajya Sabha MP Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, Khandapada MLA Anubhav Patnaik, Ranpur MLA Rabi Mohapatra also addressed the meeting.