BJP's Maverick Leader Pratap Sarangi Faces an Uphill Task in Odisha's Balasore

Bhubaneswar: Former Union minister Pratap Sarangi, who once earned praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his austere lifestyle, is seen as a hardliner and something of a maverick in the Bharatiya Janata Party. Not one to mince his words, he believes in speaking his mind. But that is sometimes misunderstood as a sign of arrogance. The image has stuck to him as he battles to retain the prestigious Balasore Lok Sabha seat where he is being challenged by Congress veteran and former Union minister Srikant Jena and Biju Janata Dal’s Lekhashri Samantsinghar.

While Jena, an old war horse, had won the seat for the Congress in 2009, Samantsinghar, a BJP turncoat who must have looked up to Sarangi for guidance when she was in the saffron camp, is making her maiden bid to enter parliament from this seat which has a mixed history of loyalty to different parties. Sarangi’s outspokenness and perceived arrogance is as much a talking point in the constituency as his alleged non-performance. “People are not happy with him. He was a minister at the Centre but did little for the development of the constituency. He will find it extremely difficult to defend the seat on his own. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity, however, may help him in this battle which is getting fiercer with each passing day,” said local journalist Sibdas Kundu.

Samantsinghar’s biggest weakness is her turncoat tag, which she is finding difficult to shake off. Considering that she was one of the staunchest critics of the BJD and chief minister Naveen Patnaik for so many years when she was in the BJP, explaining her sudden “change of heart” to the people is proving to be an uphill task. “How can you overnight become an ardent devotee of a person you were criticising almost everyday for the last so many years. This is rank opportunism and something hard to digest,” said Chandrakanti Mishra, a home-maker.

The BJD, however, is projecting her candidature as a symbol of women’s empowerment, a goal towards which chief minister Patnaik has been working since he first came to power in 2000. Samantsinghar, in fact, was the last of the seven women Lok Sabha candidates announced by BJD, fulfilling the chief minister’s promise of reserving 30% of party tickets for women.

Women’s empowerment is one of the major poll planks of the regional party this time, with a focus on women’s self-help groups (SHGs) which are engaged in financially remunerative activities in all parts of the state. Balasore is no exception. Members of the SHGs, who have voted faithfully for the BJD in almost every election, are unlikely to change their loyalty this time despite a perceptible undercurrent in favour of Modi, on whom depends the fate of his party candidate.

Unlike most other constituencies of the state where the Congress has only a nominal presence, the party is a strong contender for the Balasore seat. Despite his lack of resources, Jena has been able to project himself as the only one among the top three contenders to have sincerely worked for the development of the constituency. His supporters credit him with the establishment of an AIIMS satellite centre at Balasore and construction of a major flyover in the city located close to the West Bengal border. “He has actually done something for this area. There is a lot of sympathy for him,” said Kundu.

The constituency was a Congress stronghold for a long time and even though the party’s old base has been eroded substantially over the years, Jena can still has a connect with the people. A master strategist, he is very good at backing his claims and arguments with statistics, which has earned him the sobriquet of “intellectual politician”. Political analysts like Shashi Kant Mishra believe that despite the resource constraint he faces, he can pose a serious challenge to his BJP and BJD rivals in Balasore. “He is running his campaign systematically by marshalling his resources carefully. His plus point is he is not only aware of his strengths and weaknesses, he also acknowledges them,” said Mishra.

The lotus bloomed rather late in Balasore, with the BJP winning the seat for the first time in 1998 when it had an alliance with the BJD in the state. The seat remained with the party till 2009 when it was snatched away by the Congress with Jena as its candidate. The collapse of the BJP-BJD alliance in the state was a major factor behind the defeat of the BJP in the constituency in 2009 when Jena emerged victorious with a convincing margin in a triangular contest. Jena went on to become a minister in the second UPA government led by Manmohan Singh.

Jena, however, faced a crushing defeat in the 2014 elections at the hands of BJD’s Rabindra Kumar Jena, who won by a margin of more than 1.5 lakh votes. Sarangi, who is now trying to defend the seat on behalf of BJP, had finished second in that election behind the BJD candidate with whom he got even in 2019 when he won from Balasore, albeit with a narrow margin of around 13,000 votes.

The seat, thus, has been changing its loyalties frequently, which is the reason all the three major contenders see a chance for themselves. However, they are also keenly aware of the challenges they face. While Sarangi has to contend with an undercurrent of discontent apparently caused by his non-performance, Samantsinghar, despite her firebrand image, has to convince people that her election-eve defection to the BJD has not in any way affected her commitment to serve them.

Jena, on the other hand, has to deal with the possibility of undercutting by his rivals within the Congress who are unhappy with the leadership for having preferred him over the party’s 2019 candidate Navajyoti Patnaik, son of former state Congress chief Niranjan Patnaik, who had polled around 180,000 votes and finished third in a tough contest.

Balasore seems set to witness an interesting battle.

Ashutosh Mishra is an independent journalist.