BHUBANESWAR: Coinciding with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Odisha visit, Congress’ Jairam Ramesh, in a X post, raised three questioned to him relating to the state saying chief minister Naveen Patnaik and Modi were two sides of the same coin.

Jairam asked why the PM is lying about BJP’s ‘relationship status’ with BJD, why nothing changed after the Balasore train accident and why BJP weakened the forest rights of tribal communities.
The former Union minister said the official seat-sharing talks between BJP and BJD earlier this year only confirmed what everyone already knew. Despite officially claiming to be in opposition to each other, the two parties are together. In the last 10 years, BJD MPs in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha have supported the Modi government on every controversial bill, including the no-confidence motion, he wrote.
Pointing out BJD’s support to Ashwini Vaishnav for Rajya Sabha berth, Jairam said in return, the Modi government protected BJD from ED-CBI inquiries and raids, which is usually the case with opposition parties. He sought a clarification from the PM about his party’s association with BJD.
Mentioning about the train tragedy at Bahanaga in Balasore district last year, the Congress politician said why the Railway Ministry did not take corrective measures. He said during the tenure of Modi government, Railways is facing the problem of large number of vacant posts of employees across the country and held Modi government responsible for the deaths in these accidents. “What is BJP doing to ensure that such an accident does not happen again?” he asked.
Jairam said Congress led govt passed the Forest Rights Act (FRA), giving the tribals and other forest-dwelling communities the legal right to manage their own forests and benefit economically from their produce.
On 3 March 2013, Jamguda in Odisha became the second village in the country to receive official permission to sell minor forest produce under the community rights provisions of the Forest Rights Act. However, Modi has undone the progress by introducing the Forest Conservation Amendment Act, he said, adding the new Act weakens the Forest Rights Act of 2006, removing provisions for consent of local communities and other statutory requirements for forest clearance over vast areas. Clearly, the intention behind this is to hand over our forests to the corporate friends of the PM, he wrote.