Dear Shri Patnaiki,

Please accept my heartiest felicitations on your bold decision to walk out of the alliance with the communal and fascist BJP, which was desperately trying to turn the peaceful state of Orissa into a communal laboratory, on the lines of Gujarat.

I understand well how smaller regional players like the BJD led by your good self and the JD (S) led by myself are sometimes forced into alliances/coalitions with national parties to prevent destruction of our parties and often to provide stability and not impose yet another financial burden on our impoverished people in the wake of a fractured mandate.

But there are certain core values and principles such as secularism, federalism et al we have inherited, believed, cherished and nurtured through our political lives and when we see such fascist forces trampling on those life giving values, we do not compromise even if it means losing power or positions, which for us have always been means to serve the people and not an end in itself.

Victim of a conspiracy to eliminate our political existence and identity, my party legislators in Karnataka too were forced to enter into an alliance with the communal BJP but when it dawned on us that beneath all their overt commitments to constitutional norms and secularism lay a covert design to ruthlessly tear apart the nation’s secular fabric and turn the state into a communal laboratory, we decided to call it a day.

When the unfortunate anti-Christian violence took place in Kandhamal last year, I knew that a thoroughly secular gentleman politician like your good self cannot be comfortable with such anti-social, anti-minorities fascist forces for long as was evident from your statements condemning the perpetrators behind the violence and their political and so-called ‘non-political’ masters.

We were all eagerly looking forward to your breaking free from the communal forces and joining hands with the Third Front to provide a secular, pro-people, pro-farmer, non-Congress and non-BJP national alternative to the people of this country.

I am happy to note your good self following the footsteps of your illustrious father, the late Biju Patnaik, with whom I shared very close association. It is high time all like-minded secular forces sink their differences and work together for the toiling underprivileged, downtrodden, exploited and impoverished masses of India.

I look forward to closely working with you in the days to come,

With best wishes and kind regards

(H D Deve Gowda)