Political temperatures soared in Odisha’s capital on Wednesday as two rival camps took to the streets, turning the sensitive issue of repeated examination paper leaks into a high-voltage slugfest between the BJP and the BJD.
At Ram Mandir, senior BJP leaders and workers staged a vociferous protest against former Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s recent remarks. Ekamra-Bhubaneswar MLA Babu Singh accused the BJD of blatant hypocrisy and “double-faced politics.”
“Those who ruled Odisha for 24 years while loudly claiming to be anti-Congress have today revealed their true colours,” Singh said. He pointed to multiple paper leaks during the BJD regime — including the Constable recruitment exam and Matriculation exams of 2018 and 2022 — and called the BJD’s demand for Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation “laughable.”
Singh further alleged that the BJD was indirectly supporting “anti-national forces” by backing protests that have witnessed violence and anti-national slogans. “Naveen Babu and Rahul Gandhi are two sides of the same coin. Their opportunistic politics has been exposed today,” he declared, adding that the BJD’s 24-year rule had pushed the future of Odisha’s youth into darkness through systemic corruption in recruitment exams.
Meanwhile, barely a few kilometres away at Master Canteen Chowk, the Biju Yuva Janata Dal and Biju Chhatra Janata Dal staged a parallel protest. Led by Biju Yuva Janata Dal president Chinmay Sahu and Biju Chhatra Janata Dal president Ipsita Sahu, hundreds of youth and student leaders burnt an effigy of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and raised slogans demanding his immediate resignation.
“Students and parents across the country are living in constant anxiety because of repeated paper leaks,” Chinmay Sahu said. “The central government has completely failed in conducting fair examinations. Instead of owning up to its failures and bringing systemic reforms, it is ignoring students’ demands. The minister must resign on moral grounds.”
Ipsita Sahu echoed the sentiment: “Meritorious students have the right to compete in a transparent, impartial and corruption-free examination system. The future of an entire generation is being sacrificed due to administrative failure.”
The contrasting protests laid bare the deep political fault lines in Odisha. While the BJP accused the BJD of past paper-leak scandals and current proximity to Congress-led agitations, the BJD youth wing squarely blamed the BJP-led central government for the nationwide crisis affecting lakhs of aspirants.
Both events saw significant participation from party MLAs, office-bearers and grassroots workers, underlining that the paper-leak controversy has become the latest battleground in Odisha’s polarised politics.
As students continue to demand accountability and systemic reform, Wednesday’s twin protests in Bhubaneswar made one thing clear: in the high-stakes game of Odisha politics, the issue of paper leaks has become far more than an administrative failure — it is now a potent political weapon.
