BJP chief Amit Shah claimed that his party would win over 120 seats in the state
BJP chief Amit Shah today announced that his party would fight the Odisha assembly polls alone.
He also slammed the Naveen Patnaik government for its "incompetence", saying benefits of over Rs 4 lakh crore given by the Centre to the state had not reached the masses.
The BJP president, who is on a three-day tour of Odisha, pitched for a younger leadership to run the state and came down heavily on Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, saying backwardness and poverty continued due to his government's "misrule, inefficiency and corruption".
Mr Shah, however, parried a query on who would be the BJP's face in the state, saying the party had not decided on it. "BJP will fight the next elections in Odisha alone. There will be no alliance with any other political party," Mr Shah said at a press conference here.
He also claimed that his party would win over 120 seats in the 147-member assembly. Asked how his party planned to go to 120 from the 10 it bagged in 2014, Mr Shah said his party won over three-fourths of the seats in Uttar Pradesh after getting only 15 per cent votes in the previous poll.
He added that the BJP had won 18 per cent votes in the state. The BJP had received huge support from people in the last panchayat elections held earlier this year, he noted.
Mr Shah said Odisha would be no exception to the BJP's rise across the country as both the BJD and the Congress are on a decline.
The BJP wave is sweeping all over the country and the same trend will be witnessed in Odisha, he said.