Bhubaneswar/Kendrapara/Sambalpur: In November last year, when V.K. Pandian — former private secretary to Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and a key confidant — quit the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and formally joined the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), posters prominently displaying his face alongside the CM appeared across the state.
In many of the posters, former Odisha CM Biju Patnaik, father of Naveen Patnaik, was missing from the posters. Naveen Patnaik had founded the BJD after the death of his father.
By April this year, all such posters displaying Pandian’s face were removed from the state.
The move, BJD insiders said, could have been triggered by feedback suggesting that it had not gone down well with the people, resentment among party workers and backlash from the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“It has unwittingly become an election issue,” a BJD leader told ThePrint on condition of anonymity. “With the CM becoming less visible in public, people started talking about Pandian’s bigger role within the party and overshadowing other leaders,” the leader added.
The BJD was quick to do a kind of course correction. Pandian’s posters have now been replaced with those displaying CM Naveen Patnaik, the party’s candidate for the Lok Sabha or Assembly elections and Biju Patnaik.
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Pandian, BJD’s star campaigner
Posters carrying Pandian’s face might have been removed from across the state. But Saturday, the BJD named him as its second star campaigner after Naveen Patnaik — rekindling speculation about his utility in the run-up to the elections in the state, which will see simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly polls starting 13 May.
“The naming of Pandian as the star campaigner has laid to rest all speculation over his role in the elections. He has been involved in all aspects of the electioneering process — from selection of candidates to picking up issues to highlight as CM Naveen Patnaik seeks a sixth term in office,” a second BJD leader in Kendrapara told ThePrint.
ଲକ୍ଷ୍ମୀ ହୋଇଛନ୍ତି ସଦୟ, ଗାଁ ଗାଁରେ ବିକାଶର ନବୀନ ସୂର୍ଯ୍ୟୋଦୟ। ଗ୍ରାମାଞ୍ଚଳରେ ‘ଲକ୍ଷ୍ମୀ’ ବସ୍ ସେବା ସୁନିଶ୍ଚିତ ହୋଇଛି। ଲୋକଙ୍କ ଦୈନଦିନ ଜୀବନଯାତ୍ରାରେ ରୂପାନ୍ତରଣ ଆସିଛି।#NabinOdisha #LaxmiYojana#GhareGhareLaxmi#Odisha #5T pic.twitter.com/kZaHacXzho
— Biju Janata Dal (@bjd_odisha) April 22, 2024
Besides Pandian, BJD general secretary and Lok Sabha candidate from Sambalpur, Pranab Prakash Das, Rajya Sabha MP Sasmit Patra, former BJD minister Pratap Jena and former Rajya Sabha MP Pratap Keshari Deb are among the party’s 40 other star campaigners.
After Pandian quit the IAS last October, he was appointed chairman of the Naveen Patnaik government’s flagship initiative 5T (Transparency, Technology, Teamwork, Time and Transformation), which is a citizen-centric governance initiative to review service delivery and address public grievances.
Pandian’s profile within BJD & the backlash
A close aide of CM Patnaik, Pandian started working with him as his private secretary in 2011. His growing influence over the CM and his say in both administrative and party matters have been met with resentment by the old guard, forcing some leaders to part ways.
Pandian has been with Patnaik for over a decade and is today considered the most trusted lieutenant of the septuagenarian chief minister. He is also seen by many as Patnaik’s potential successor.
However, speaking at a news event hosted by CNN-News18 last month, Pandian had said that the people of Odisha should answer the question about who would be Naveen Patnaik’s successor. “I am the successor of his values, I am the successor of his hard work, I get inspired by his sincerity, commitment and keeping politics away from public service and doing service to the people. These are values that I have imbibed from the chief minister. Politics can come later on — whenever, whatever people will decide, it’s fine,” he said.
According to former BJD leaders, Pandian has complete control over the CM and controls access to him. “It is difficult to get an audience with the CM,” said a former BJD leader who joined the BJP.
The BJD has lately seen a spate of resignations. The most recent was of its six-time MP from Cuttack, Bhartruhari Mahtab, who quit the party to join the BJP in March and is contesting to win a seventh consecutive term from the Cuttack Lok Sabha seat.
In an interview with ThePrint earlier this month, Baijayant Jay Panda, the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Kendrapara, said that all of Odisha knows that for the past 8-9 years, Pandian has been running the show behind the scenes.
“… the widespread belief is that Mr Pandian is his (CM’s) successor. But Naveen Patnaik has to clarify…. This is the question people of Odisha keep on asking repeatedly because none of the leadership has been allowed to grow beyond a point, to take the BJD forward to the next generation, into the next era,” said Panda, who quit the BJD in 2018 and joined the BJP a few months later.
He added that there is no answer to it. “Now, it is up to Naveen Patnaik and the BJD to answer who is the successor.”
Furthermore, Panda said that within the BJD, there has been a long track record of cutting down to size anybody who gained significant popularity.
“It started almost from day one with the denial of ticket to Bijoy Mohapatra, unceremonious sacking, very unfairly, of Nalini Kanta Mohanty. You saw what happened to Dilip Ray, Ram Krushna Patnaik, my own experience, and many others,” he had highlighted.
He had also said that humiliation meted out to senior leaders, who have made a name for themselves in the BJD, is rankling, and there is widespread resentment against that. “So, they have an internal contradiction, which somehow or the other they have managed, but you can’t do that forever. That reality is tearing the BJD apart today,” he added.
BJP has made Pandian an election issue
The Opposition BJP has made Pandian an election issue and is targeting the Patnaik-led BJD government for compromising Odisha’s asmita (pride) by giving unbridled power to a former IAS belonging to Tamil Nadu.
In June last year, when Pandian was Patnaik’s private secretary, he had toured across the state in a helicopter to meet BJD workers and common people, listening to and addressing their grievances under the 5Ts programme.
Soon after, Aparajita Sarangi, BJP’s sitting MP from Bhubaneswar and Odisha BJP president Manmohan Samal submitted a complaint to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) that Pandian violated All India Services Conduct Rules, 1948, by touring the state in a helicopter, meeting BJD workers and attending public meetings while in service.
Following this, the DoPT had written to state chief secretary P.K. Jena to take appropriate action in the matter.
Aparajita Sarangi, BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from the high-profile Bhubaneswar seat, told ThePrint in an interview that a close aide of Naveen Patnaik is virtually the CM of the state, which the people of Odisha hate.
“Naveen Patnaik has outsourced the government to this close aide of his who does not take into account the opinion, views, suggestions of people who matter in BJD…We want the chief minister to come out and talk to the public, and lead all of us from the front. But for the past 10 years, he has been completely ‘invisible’,” she said.
‘He is not one of us’
The BJP making Pandian’s growing prominence in BJD a hot political issue is one thing. But very rarely does it happen that a state civil servant becomes a topic of intense discussion and speculation among ordinary voters, including in villages, during election season.
In many of the villages and towns across Bhubaneswar, Kendrapara and Sambalpur that ThePrint travelled to between 9 and 19 April, it came across people, in both rural and urban pockets, who had not only heard Pandian’s name but even had strong views about him.
In Kendrapara, Pradipta Kumar Pradhan, former sarpanch of Bachharai village in Patkura, a BJD stronghold, said Pandian may be a good administrator and takes quick decisions but he is not an Odia. “BJD workers do not support him because he is a Tamilian. He is not one of us,” said Pradhan.
In western Odisha’s Sambalpur, a small-time BJD office bearer told ThePrint that there is a view that Pandian is interested in taking over the CM’s chair after Naveen Patnaik. “No Odia will accept that. We won’t let a non-Odia dictate what we should or should not do. We are with the BJD as long as Naveen Patnaik is there,” the worker said.
Pandian might be a Tamilian but his wife, Sujata Karthikeyan, an IAS officer, is an Odia.
Meanwhile, Ruben Banerjee, former editor of Outlook, who has followed Patnaik since his early days and chronicled his political journey in the book ‘Naveen Patnaik’ told ThePrint, “I find that in Mr Pandian’s entire public engagement, he appears to be lecturing the people from a pedestal. That has not gone down well and so there is a backlash.”
Banerjee added that, so far, the BJD’s election campaign looks very tired. “They have not been able to come up with an inspiring campaign to invigorate the Odia public.”
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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