Guwahati: Speaking to a local news channel in Odisha Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Puri candidate Sambit Patra remarked that Odisha’s most revered deity “Lord Jagannath is a devotee (bhakt) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi” and this triggered a huge political angst.
Top leaders such as Naveen Patnaik, Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal have all hit out at the BJP.
Later, Patra, however, described it as a “slip of the tongue”.
The Congress party shared a video of Patra speaking in Odia and slammed his remark on a local TV news channel, demanding that Prime Minister Modi apologise for the comment.
The Odisha chief minister shared his views on X and criticised Patra for hurting Odia’s ‘Asmita’ (pride).
“Mahaprabhu Shree Jagannatha is the Lord of the Universe. Calling Mahaprabhu a ‘bhakt’ of another human being is an insult to the Lord… it is totally condemnable. This has hurt the sentiments and demeaned the faith of crores of Jagannatha bhaktas and Odias across the world.
“The Lord is the greatest symbol of Odia asmita. I strongly denounce the statement… and I appeal to the BJP to keep the Lord above any political discourse. By this, you have deeply hurt Odia Asmita and this will be remembered and condemned by the people of Odisha for a very long time,” Naveen Patnaik said.
Patra later clarified that he wanted to mean that the PM was an ardent ‘bhakt’ (devotee) of Lord Jagannath and not the other way around.
Responding to Patnaik’s post, Patra wrote, “I gave a number of bytes today to multiple media channels after the massive success of Shri Narendra Modiji’s road show in Puri today, everywhere I mentioned that Modi ji is an ardent ‘bhakt’ of Shri Jagannath Mahaprabhu. By mistake during one of the bytes, I said just the opposite… I know you too know and understand this… Sir let’s not make an issue out of a nonexistent issue… we all have slip of the tongue sometimes.”