Bhubaneswar, June 9: Bureaucrat-turned-BJD leader VK Pandian on Sunday announced retirement from active politics amid a section of party leaders and workers expressing resentment against Pandian following the party’s poll defeat in the State.
“My only intent was to help Naveen Patnaik,” the BJD leader, who is a close aide of Naveen Patnaik, said in a video.
During election campaign, Pandian asserted that he would quit politics if party president Naveen Patnaik does not become the Chief Minister of Odisha for the sixth time in a row after the Assembly elections.
Pandian, a close aide of Patnaik, also challenged BJP heavyweight Dharmendra Pradhan to announce that the BJP leader would also take political ‘sanyas’ if the saffron party failed to come to power in the State.
