Bhubaneswar: The son of a watchman, Mohan Majhi, a four-time MLA from tribal-dominated Keonjhar, has risen from the ranks to become the first BJP chief minister of Odisha.
He is also the third person of tribal origin, after Hemanand Biswal and Giridhar Gamang, to take up the reins of the state, where members of the tribal community account for nearly 23% of the population.
It is an interesting coincidence that Majhi hails from the same Santhal tribe to which President Droupadi Murmu also belongs. She comes from Mayurbhanj, the district adjoining Keonjhar. Together, the two districts constitute one of the state’s longest contiguous tribal belts.
Ambitious and hard-working, Majhi, 52, is the first chief minister of the state hailing from northern Odisha, which has generally lagged behind the coastal and western parts of the state in terms of political clout.
His election as chief minister is, thus, an attempt by the BJP leadership to strike a regional balance while consolidating its tribal vote bank.
A native of Raikala village in Keonjhar, Majhi is a graduate who started out as a teacher or “guruji” in one of the RSS-controlled Saraswati Shishu Mandirs. He made his political debut in 1997 by winning the sarpanch election of the Raikala gram panchayat.
With his popularity growing, he was elected to the Odisha assembly for the first time in 2000 from the Keonjhar reserved seat. He won the seat again in 2004, but was defeated in 2009 when the BJP’s alliance with the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal (BJD) collapsed and both parties contested the elections on their own.
Majhi contested the Keonjhar seat unsuccessfully in 2014 but went on to win from there in 2019. He repeated the performance in the recently concluded elections, which saw the BJP winning a majority in the state on its own for the first time, thus paving the way for his elevation to the top post.
Seen as a hardliner, Majhi has a strong RSS background. He has been associated with the organisation for a long time, an important factor contributing to his rapid rise within the BJP.
During the period that he was the sarpanch of his native village, he also served as state secretary of the BJP’s Adivasi morcha. He was deputy chief whip in the BJD-BJP coalition government after being elected to the state assembly for the second time in 2004.
After the BJP emerged as the main opposition party in the state in the wake of the 2019 elections, the tribal stalwart was appointed the party’s chief whip in the state assembly and frequently led his party’s charge against the Naveen Patnaik government.
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Known as a grassroots leader who easily mingles with people and commands their respect, Majhi’s administrative experience is limited to being a member of the Standing Committee of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes under the Orissa Reservation of Vacancies in Post and Services (For SC and ST) Act, 1975 and chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee in the state from 2022 to 2024.
However, his honesty and integrity as a politician have never been in doubt. Those close to him also vouch for his extremely caring nature.
“He will go out of his way to help people and never miss an invitation to attend village functions. This is what has endeared him to the people of the constituency. The party also depends a lot on him because of his organisational skills,” said journalist Tapas Mishra.
Though Majhi was always the dark horse in the chief minister’s race, the final announcement about his selection still left many surprised.
Deputy chief ministers
The party leadership sprung another surprise by naming two deputy chief ministers, something that has happened only once before in the history of Odisha. In 1995, when J.B. Patnaik led a Congress government in the state, he had two senior leaders, Hemanand Biswal and Basant Kumar Biswal, as his deputies.
The move to appoint K.V. Singh Deo and Pravati Parida as the state’s new deputy chief ministers state seems to be an attempt at soothing some ruffled feathers over Majhi’s election to the top post while striking a balance and ensuring representation to all the major factions within the state party.
Singh Deo, 67, a scion of the erstwhile royal family of Patnagarh in western Odisha, was one of the top contenders for the post of chief minister. A six-time MLA from Patnagarh, he was a minister in the BJP-BJD coalition government in the state and, thus, enjoys considerable administrative experience.
The grandson of former Odisha chief minister Rajendra Narayan Singh Deo, Kanak Vardhan, nicknamed K.V. by friends, was elected to the state assembly for the first time in 1995 and continued to hold the Patnagarh seat till 2019, when he lost to the BJD’s Saroj Meher. However, in the recently held polls, he managed to defeat his rival, although by a narrow margin.
From 2000 to 2009, when the BJD-BJP coalition government was in power, Singh Deo held important portfolios such as industries and urban development. His wife Sangeeta Singh Deo is the incumbent Lok Sabha MP from Bolangir. She has won the seat five times.
Pravati Parida, the other deputy chief minister chosen by the party, is a first-time MLA from the Nimapara assembly constituency in the coastal Puri district.
Though Pravati, 57, contested the seat in 2014 and 2019, she lost to the BJD’s Samir Ranjan Dash. However, in a strange twist of fate, she managed to win this time primarily because of the support of her former rival who, after being denied a ticket by the BJD, joined the BJP and backed her to the hilt.
Among the few women leaders of the BJP to have won the assembly election this time, Parida has served as president of the BJP’s mahila morcha in the state and has been quite vocal on women and children-related issues. She is a law graduate who led an 11-day-long mahila suraksha yatra in the state in 2018 to protest rising crimes against women.
While the BJP leadership has ensured fair representation to western Odisha with the appointment of K.V. Singh Deo as deputy CM, the choice of Parida, who hails from the coastal belt, as his counterpart is aimed at sending out a message that the party accords due importance to women. This is also an attempt at countering the BJD’s women card, which has been so effective for the party in successive elections.
