OLD ADVERSARIES AT IT AGAIN

A BITTER CRITIC of Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik, Union tribal affairs minister and senior BJP leader Jual Oram never misses any chance to undermine the political weight of Mr Patnaik. When scribes on Thursday asked Mr Oram about the chief minister’s recent letter to him urging to take steps for amendment of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) so as to enable more tribals and people of Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFD) category to avail record of rights of the land they have been living since long, the Union minister said “the CM has no knowledge of the law”.

“Perhaps Naveen does not know that the existing FRA takes care of all concerns which he has raised in his letter. While the amendment he has proposed lacks real concern, it aims at facilitating land grabbing by some of his influential henchmen like nontribal MLA Sanatan Mahakud who is in illegal possessions of hundreds of acres of forest land,” the Union minister said, adding, “the CM’s wisdom on forest rights has no worth.”