New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) are locked in a tight contest in Odisha with the former leading in 80 seats, one more than the majority mark in the 147-member assembly.
Since its inception in 1997, the BJD has never lost the assembly elections as Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has had an uninterrupted reign of 24 years over five consecutive terms.
The BJD was leading in 48 seats as of 4 pm, according to Election Commission data. The Congress, which had almost been decimated in the state in 2019, was leading in 15 seats.
On many seats, the BJP’s lead ranges from 400 to 2,000, making it a tight contest.
It will be the first time that the BJD, under Patnaik’s leadership, might end up below the majority mark and could find it difficult to form the government in the eastern state. Had the party continued its winning streak, in a few months from now, Patnaik would have been the longest serving chief minister in India.
In 2019, the BJD won 112 of the 147 seats in the assembly, the BJP 12 seats and the Congress one.
BJP looking at almost a clean sweep in Lok Sabha too
It’s not just the assembly elections. The BJP is looking at almost a clean sweep in the Lok sabha elections too, which were held alongside the assembly polls. Of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state, BJP is leading in 19 with BJD and Congress leading in one each.
All the big BJP names — Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, BJD national spokesperson Baijayant Panda, sitting Bhubaneswar MP Aparajita Sarangi and Sambit Patra among others are leading from their respective Lok Sabha seats of Sambalpur, Kendrapara, Bhubaneswar and Puri.
Even in CM Patnaik’s home constituency Aska, BJP’s Anita Subhadarshini is leading by over 26,000 votes in the Lok Sabha seat.
The BJP has massively improved its performance from the 2019 Lok Sabha when it won just 8 of the 21 seats. The BJD had won 12 seats and the Congress won one.
The trend, a Odisha BJP leader said, is indicative of the huge undercurrent against the BJD on the ground. “Though Naveen Patnaik is popular, there was a huge anti-incumbency against the sitting BJD MLAs.”
Even the plethora of schemes and programmes targeting all sections of the population, be it the poor, women, elderly, farmers etc. that formed the bedrock of Patnaik’s popularity in the state, does not seem to have helped the BJD like it had expected.
BJP made Pandian an election issue
Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the BJP had campaigned aggressively in Odisha from the word go despite the general perception of bonhomie between the BJD and central BJP leadership, and talks of a possible alliance between the two in the run-up to the elections.
The alliance did not work out and it worked in BJP’s favour, a senior BJP state leader told ThePrint.
The opposition BJP made Patnaik’s close confidante VK Pandian a big election issue, targeting the BJD government for compromising Odisha’s ‘asmita’ (pride) by giving unbridled power to a former IAS belonging to Tamil Nadu.
Both Modi and Shah, among other senior BJP leaders, have attacked Pandian during the campaign for “running the government in Odisha from behind the scenes”.
On 26 May, while addressing an election rally in the state’s Baripada, Modi appeared to allude to Pandian without naming him when he said that a “lobby” was behind the Odisha CM’s “failing health”.
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.
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.
Resentment against sitting MLAs, ticket distribution criteria
According to local BJD workers ThePrint had spoken to, people were angry with some of the party MPs and local MLAs, who they said disappeared from their constituencies after winning elections or did not do enough for their constituents.
This, coupled with the party’s ticket distribution criteria — where many outsiders or close relatives of leaders were given tickets, ignoring local leaders — and Patnaik’s close aide V.K. Pandian becoming more and more visible instead of the CM, had become a talking point among voters not only in towns and cities but rural areas too.
This could have an impact on the outcome in both the Lok Sabha and assembly elections, a local BJD leader had told thePrint.
Odisha witnessed a high stakes contest this time. While BJD tried to overcome anti-incumbency in its quest for power for the sixth time, BJP worked on the ground to expand its base in the state. From winning one out of 21 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 general elections, BJP increased its tally to 8 in 2019. BJP improved its assembly tally, too, from 10 out of 147 seats in 2014 to 23 in 2019.
Traveling across coastal and western Odisha towns of Puri, Bhubaneswar, Kendrapara, Sambalpur and Kalahandi in April and May, ThePrint spoke to several dozen people in rural and urban pockets, who said they still want to see Naveen Patnaik as CM after 25 years but were resentful against the local MLAs who they said have rarely visited their constituencies in the last five years.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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