New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sprung a surprise in Odisha with its almost clean sweep in Lok Sabha polls – leading in 19 of the 21 seats – and crossing the majority in the 147-member assembly.
The party is looking at dethroning the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in the eastern state. It is leading in 80 of the 147 seats with a good margin. The halfway mark is 74. The BJD, which enjoyed five consecutive terms in power in the state, was leading in 49, and the Congress was ahead in 14 seats.
But the BJP’s plot to break Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik’s stranglehold on Odisha did not happen in a day.
Even as its central leadership maintained a cordial equation with the BJD for much of the last five years leaving party workers confused, the state BJP continued to work silently on the ground to expand its base beyond western Odisha, considered the party’s stronghold.
Senior BJP leaders in the state told ThePrint the party’s decision to go alone in the assembly as well as Lok Sabha elections helped in galvanizing the workers on the ground and turned the tide in its favour.
Strengthening organisation, reaching right up to booth
Senior BJP leaders in the state told ThePrint they realised that if they have to become a pan Odisha party, they will have to strengthen the organisation across the state.
And they have been silently going about their job – right from conducting membership drives to increasing their outreach. From 40 lakh three years ago, BJP’s membership in the state has soared close to over 55 lakh, BJP Odisha president Manmohan Samal told ThePrint.
Senior state BJP leader Sajjan Sharma, who heads the party’s media wing, told ThePrint that BJP’s organisational infrastructure was limited in the assembly segment in 2019.
“But we have addressed these organisational weaknesses. Today, we have set up 1,005 mandals for 147 assembly constituencies. One mandal consists of 70 workers.”
A mandal is a combination of zila parishad seats and urban wards. The 36,000 booths in the 147 assembly constituencies in the state come under the mandals. “The worker at the mandal coordinates with the districts and passes on the information to the booth level worker. There are 10 workers in every booth. It’s the booth workers who then go and create awareness among the voters to come out and vote,” Sharma said.
Samal said the BJP got anywhere between 70,000-80,000 votes in many of the assembly constituencies in the coastal areas in 2019. “The average vote that we got was not less than 40,000–45,000. We became an alternative to the BJD in 2019. We were the number three party for about 50 years in Odisha. In 2019, we became the second party. This time we are eyeing the government,” he said.
Converted growing influence to winnability
The BJP’s influence in Odisha might have increased since the last decade or so but a section of party leaders felt that this needed to be converted to winnability. “So far, we have not been able to convert the influence to winnability to the extent that we should have. There was an undercurrent against the BJD but we could not leverage that,” the leader, who did not want to be named, said.
The leader admits that infighting within the ranks was an issue. “This was a problem…Infighting happens all the time but it intensifies during election season.”
Former BJP state president Samir Mohanty, however, said that infighting reflects that there is intra party democracy. “It happens before every election when a candidate does not get a ticket. But this time around, we contained the infighting,” he said.
Mohanty said that compared to 2019, BJP’s organisational heft in the state has gone up manifold. “In 2019, in public perception there was doubt/confusion about whether BJP will be able to win any seat or not. But in 2024, there was no such confusion. I am hopeful of winning 99 percent of the seats. The mood is such. Our organisation is far more strong now than in 2019,” he said.
According to political commentators, the BJP-BJD bonhomie did more harm than good to the party. “The perception that the central BJP was hand in glove with the state BJD has done more harm than good to the BJP. Instead of BJP’s graph rising, it started declining,” a political commentator, who did not want to be named, said.
Party leaders said though BJP has been in Odisha from late 90s but its organisational infrastructure at the grassroot was not very strong. “It’s only after 2014 the BJP got a fillip in the state.
“Though in the 2014 election, BJP won just one seat but the party started strengthening its base in earnest post 2014. Amit Shah ji, who was the party president then started visiting Odisha regularly, reviewing the work of the state unit leaders and holding meetings with party workers. This gave a big boost to the cadre,” said Mohanty.
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Odisha was back in focus.
Even PM Narendra Modi visited Odisha multiple times after 2014, addressing rallies and inaugurating projects. Bhubaneswar was chosen as the venue for BJP’s national executive in 2017. Two Odisha BJP leaders were given cabinet berths. Sundargarh MP Jual Oram became the tribal affairs minister, and Dharmendra Pradhan was nominated to Rajya Sabha and became the petroleum minister. Another Odia, Ashwini Vaishnaw, was nominated to Rajya Sabha with BJD’s support.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, BJP’s ideological fount, also organised several of its programmes in the state since 2014. In January, RSS held its national-level chintan shivir in Odisha.
This paid dividend in 2019. BJP’s tally increased to 8 in 2019 Lok Sabha polls, and its vote share increased to 38.8 percent from 21.88 percent in 2014. In assembly elections too, BJP’s vote share increased to 32.4 percent from 17.99 percent in 2014.
BJP became the principal opposition party. It replaced Congress to become the number two party in the state.
Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister and the party’s Lok Sabha candidate from Sambalpur, told ThePrint in an interview that BJP’s organisational structure in the state is robust and is gradually being strengthened.
“There are 36,000 polling stations in our state. Our slogan is booth jeeta toh chunav jeeta (You win the booth, you win the poll). We are very much focussed. Booth vijay abhiyan is on…. Modi vijay abhiyan is on,” he said.
Pradhan added that BJP’s presence has gone beyond western Odisha. “The BJP is today a pan-Odisha party. In 2019, we won the prestigious Bhubaneswar, Baleshwar Lok Sabha seats. We also won in the tribal dominated district of Mayurbhanj. So, it’s not fair to say BJP is a party of western Odisha. This time, we are going to win all the 21 seats in Parliament.”
Political observers said the major growth of BJP in Odisha has happened at the cost of Congress. Tathagata Sathpathy, former BJD MP said, “With the Congress crumbling, a lot of the worker base of the party has shifted to BJP. Because in Odisha, the Congress had always opposed the local government, in this case the BJD government. Then where else do they go than the BJP.
Satpathy, who quit the BJD in 2019 and is the editor of Odia newspaper Dharitri, said that the Congress has willy-nilly helped their worker base to shift to BJP. “With the worker base shifting to BJP, the party has gained some strength in the past one decade,” he said.
RSS influence also helped
BJP also benefited from the RSS’ presence and influence in Odisha, especially in the tribal-dominated areas. Vidya Bharti, the education wing of RSS has been running
Saraswati Shishu Mandir in the state since the late 70s. The Vanvasi Kalyan Sangh, which works in tribal areas for their uplift, has a wide network, especially in western and eastern Odisha.
However, an RSS leader said that the organisation does not work for political gains. “We work for the upliftment of society, to create awareness about nationalism. If anybody wants to leverage our influence, it’s upto them…,” the leader, who did not want to be named added.
A long journey since 1974
It was in 1974 that the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, BJP’s predecessor, joined hands with the Samyukta Socialist Party, the Congress (Organisation) and formed the Janata Party in the state to take on the Congress faction led by Indira Gandhi.
In the 1977 assembly elections, the Janata Party had a landslide victory, winning 110 of the total 147 seats. The Congress won just 26 of the 146 seats it contested.
Old-time politicians recall that the BJP was launched in Odisha in 1980. Prasanna Acharya, former BJD Rajya Sabha MP, told ThePrint, “It was after former CM R.N. Singh Deo died in 1975 that the Swatantra Party (SP) founded by him collapsed and most leaders from SP joined the BJP. Gradually, BJP’s presence increased in western Odisha, where SP had a sizable influence.”
Acharya is contesting the assembly election on a BJD ticket from Rairakhol under the Sambalpur Lok Sabha constituency.
The BJP contested the assembly election under the lotus symbol for the first time in 1980. “We contested 28 out of the 147 seats but could not win any seat. Our first breakthrough came in 1996 when we won the prestigious Bhubaneshwar seat in a bypoll after it fell vacant following Biju Patnaik’s death,” former BJP state president, Mohanty said.
Biswabhushan Harichandran, the first president of Odisha BJP, won the seat. Harichandran is the current governor of Chhattisgarh.
It was from there that BJP’s political and ideological conviction started, Mohanty said.
After that BJP’s next big haul came in the 1998 Lok Sabha polls after the alliance with BJD. Of the 21 seats, BJD kept 12 seats and left 9 seats to its alliance partner. BJP won 7 out of the 9 seats it contested and got a vote share of 21 percent.
From 1996, BJP’s vote share continued to increase and it kept winning between 7-9 seats till 2009, when the BJD called off the alliance in 2009 following the previous year’s Kandhamal riots. The BJP drew a blank in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls and managed to win just one out of the 21 seats in 2014.
Tripathy said the casualty after the alliance broke was BJP. “Its rising graph started declining. It was only after 2014 when the NDA came to power at the Centre that it started strengthening its organisation again,” he said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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