Bhubaneswar: The BJD on Sunday sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention to resolve the decades-long dispute between Odisha and Andhra Pradesh over the Kotia cluster of villages, amid the southern state issuing a notification to hold panchayat polls in the area on November 3.
Senior BJD leaders Pradeep Majhi and Bhrugu Buxipatra made the demand at a press conference here, hours before the PM arrived in the state to inaugurate the Reserve Bank of India’s data centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute at Jatni.
“The BJD would like to suggest that Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi request the PM to intervene in the Kotia issue and resolve it,” Pradeep Majhi said.
The BJD leaders urged Majhi to personally take up the matter with Modi if the CM was genuinely concerned about the issue.
The opposition leaders lambasted the “double-engine” government in the state for failing to “resist Andhra Pradesh’s intrusion into Odisha’s territory to conduct panchayat elections”.
“The BJD holds the chief minister accountable if Andhra Pradesh conducts panchayat elections in Kotia villages on November 3. The elections would be considered Majhi’s failure to protect the state’s territory,” Buxipatra said.