The Biju Janata Dal’s high-voltage protest at Lower PMG was not a fight for Odisha’s mineral rights, the BJP said on Wednesday.
It was, the ruling party alleged, a carefully staged “political launching.”
BJP spokesperson Anil Biswal made the charge at a press conference, training his fire on the opposition’s street agitation against the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2026. The BJD had marched to Lower PMG instead of pressing the issue inside the Odisha Assembly, he said. That choice, according to Biswal, exposed the real purpose of the campaign.
“The agitation behind skipping the Assembly was political launching,” he said. The party, he argued, had an open forum in the House to debate the MMDR law. It chose cameras and slogans instead.
The BJD’s case is straightforward. A 2004 state law, a long court battle, and a July 2024 Supreme Court verdict, the party says, opened the door to huge arrears and annual mining revenue. The 2026 amendment, it claims, slammed that door shut. Leader of Opposition Naveen Patnaik led the September 28 march and vowed to fight “till my last breath” for Odisha’s rights.
The BJP’s counter is equally blunt. If the law is such a threat, why was the Assembly not the first battlefield? The monsoon session had already seen disruptions over the MMDR Act and textbook errors. Opposition MLAs had rushed to the well. A special discussion was the natural next step. Instead, the BJD packed Lower PMG, broke through barricades in places, and put a new leader in front of the microphones.
That is the heart of Biswal’s attack. The protest, in the BJP’s telling, was less about federalism and more about optics: a public rollout for a leader still finding her political pitch after years in the bureaucracy.
The BJD rejects that reading. Karthikeyan and other party leaders have framed the Act as an assault on Odia pride and on funds that could have gone to welfare, education and the next generation. They have also questioned the silence of Odisha’s BJP MPs when the amendment passed Parliament.
The political temperature is now higher than the legal argument. One side says Odisha is being robbed of mineral revenue. The other says the opposition is using that fear to launch a successor-in-waiting. Between the well of the House and the asphalt of Lower PMG, Odisha’s mining debate has become a contest over motive as much as money.
For now, the BJP has drawn its line. The agitation, it says, was never only about MMDR. It was about who gets to walk out first when the cameras turn on.
