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Pro-Rao Patnaik has been ousted by Sonia, says Thakre

Bharatiya Janata Party president Kushabhau Thakre has said Orissa Chief Minister J B Patnaik's resignation, owing up moral responsibility for the recent violent attacks on Christian minorities in the state, was hogwash.

Addressing a public meeting at in Bombay in memory of the late Deendayal Upadhyay, founder of the Jan Sangh, Thakre said Patnaik belonged to the Narasimha Rao camp in the Congress and hence party chief Sonia Gandhi has removed him in order to place her own nominee in the saddle.

Coming down heavily on the Congress party for shedding ''crocodile tears'' over the plight of Dalits and other minorities in the country, the BJP president said it was the Congress with whose support the Rabri Devi government in Bihar was in power, where slaughter of Dalits was the order of the day.

Lambasting the Congress for its ''double standards'' over its commitment to protect the constitutional framework of the nation, Thakre said the party had misused the constitutional right of imposing President's rule in states several times during its more than four decade rule at the Centre.

UNI

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