BJP broke 11-year-old alliance in 11 minutes: Naveen

Bhubaneswar: BJD supremo and Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday sought to come clean on his party's estrangement with BJP and said that the saffron party took barely 11 minutes to break the 11-year alliance.

Patnaik, who had announced on March 7 that BJD would go alone in the coming polls following failure of seat sharing talks with BJP, had been silent on the issue since then and has been branded betrayer by leaders of the erstwhile alliance partner.

Patnaik chose to open up, while addressing a series of election meetings at his home district of Ganjam, saying that BJP had breached BJD's trust by withdrawing support.

He accused some erstwhile ministers belonging to the saffron party of violating the "coalition dharma" several times. "The BJP ministers and MLAs were opposing the government within the Assembly and outside which shows how they were maintaining the coalition dharma."

The manner in which the BJP ministers behaved after the Cuttack Municipal Corporation and Baripada Municipality polls, Patnaik said, was "tolerated" by him in order to save the

alliance.

BJP had withdrawn its support after the talks with BJD failed and leaders of both parties blamed each other for the break-up.

Patnaik said he had agreed for seat sharing talks despite the BJP ministers' activities against his government.

"However, their unreasonable demands ensured failure of the month-long talk," he said.

The erstwhile Higher Education Minister Samir Dey had accused him of using black money in the civic polls, while another BJP leader Golak Naik had charged him with misusing official machinery in the Baripada Municipality polls.

There was no basis in blaming BJD as BJP leaders had rushed to Raj Bhavan the same night to withdraw support in a hurry, Patnaik said.

"Their (BJP leaders) hurriedness in rushing to Raj Bhavan indicated that it was pre-planned," Patnaik said, adding that he was now free from the "bondage" of BJP.

Speaking at the election meetings, he said, "I had no relationship with BJP when I first came here a decade ago. Today too I have no relationship with it."