Bhubaneswar: Naveen Patnaik, 77, five-time chief minister of Odisha and president of the Biju Janata Dal–(BJD) the longest surviving regional party of the state–is all set to bow out of power after enjoying an uninterrupted rule of over 24 years.
Once believed to be invincible, he seems to have been done in by his overconfidence and overdependence on bureaucrat-turned-politician V.K. Pandian, who took voluntary retirement from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) last year to join the BJD.
Patnaik, who let Pandian choreograph the BJD campaign in this election, failed to read the saffron surge
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
that has swept the state with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) not only winning almost all the Lok Sabha seats in the state but also getting a clear majority in the 147-member state assembly.
BJD wiped off in Lok Sabha, decimated in Assembly
The BJP has won 78 assembly seats while the BJD could win only 51 seats. The Congress bagged 14 seats, the CPI (M) one, and independents were victorious in three Assembly constituencies.
Of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state, BJP won 20, and Congress won in one constituency, resulting in the BJD drawing a blank.
By Tuesday evening, the BJP’s big leaders from the state such as Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, national vice-president Baijayant Panda and national spokesperson Aparajita Sarangi had all won from their respective constituencies.
Also Read | Odisha: As Old Bonhomie Vanishes, BJD, BJP Face-Off in No-Holds-Barred Electoral Battle
Among the BJD heavyweights who fell by the wayside were party’s organisational secretary and second-in-command Pranab Prakash Das aka Bobby who lost to Dharmendra Pradhan from Sambalpur.
In the assembly battle, senior ministers Ashok Panda, Pradeep Amat and Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak failed to retain their seats.
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik himself lost from Kantabanji, the second seat that he contested. He did manage to win from his traditional seat of Hinjili by a narrow margin of 4,636 votes.
The performance of BJD was in sharp contrast to its 2019 show when the party had won 112 assembly and 12 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The BJP, which had bagged only 23 assembly and 8 Lok Sabha seats in the last election, read the popular pulse accurately and registered an emphatic win this time.
While the BJP’s sweep in the Lok Sabha constituencies was not unexpected, it was the surge in its assembly seats which has left many baffled.
“There was no doubt that there was an undercurrent in favour of the saffron party but it was supposed to help the party mainly in the Lok Sabha constituencies, much like 2019. Nobody expected them to win a majority in the state assembly,” said political analyst Shashi Kant Mishra.
PM Modi’s campaign targeting Patnaik, aide, brought fruit
The credit for BJP’s performance in the state has to go to the aggressive campaign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who visited Odisha repeatedly holding rallies and roadshows.
Modi went all out against his former ‘friend’ chief minister Naveen Patnaik and also targeted the latter’s man Friday–bureaucrat-turned-politician VK Pandian. The high voltage campaign often turned acrimonious with PM Modi making repeated attacks on Patnaik and Pandian.
CM Patnaik, on the other hand, seems to have underestimated his enemy’s strength because of his belief in his own invincibility. His excessive reliance on Pandian also created problems as BJP successfully projected the Tamil Nadu-born 2000 batch IAS officer as an outsider who had hijacked the state administration and turned the chief minister into his captive.
This was a recurrent theme in the BJP’s campaign which was amplified by the PM himself. Addressing a rally in Mayurbhanj he raised the issue of Patnaik’s health, implying that the CM’s health-related problems were being kept a secret.
He also played up the issue of the missing keys of 12th century Puri Jagannath temple’s Ratna Bhandar (treasure room). The narrative found resonance with the voters across the state who shifted their loyalty from the BJD to the BJP.
Reconsidering alliance with BJP was a self goal for Patnaik
While the 2024 elections have demolished the myth of Patnaik’s invincibility it has also exposed some of the strategic mistakes that he made in the run up to the polls. The biggest mistake that Parnaik made was to agree to the idea of reviving his party’s alliance with the BJP which had collapsed ahead of 2009 elections.
Earlier, till 2009, the BJD and BJP had ruled the state in coalition for nearly nine years. The alliance talks this year failed because of the resistance of cadres on both sides.
But the very fact that there was an attempt for a patch-up between the two parties was seen as a proof of BJD’s weakness. The message that went out was that Patnaik has agreed to hold alliance talks because he felt insecure and was not confident of winning the electoral battle on his own.
Also Read: Following Failure in Alliance Talks, BJP and BJD Gear Up to Face Each Other as Rivals
Some political observers believe that the talks were actually an eyewash but the BJD failed to realize this and walked into the trap laid by its rival.
As the stage gets set for a change of regime in the state and Naveen Patnaik prepares to bow out of office without realizing his dream of winning a sixth straight term which would have made him the longest serving chief minister of the country, top BJP leaders got into a huddle in Bhubaneswar to discuss the modalities of forming a government.
Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the poster boy of BJP in the state, thanked people for giving his party a chance to serve them.
Following the party’s humiliating defeat, BJD spokesperson Sasmit Patra expressed his gratitude to the people and said his party would continue to work for them.
The results also showed that Congress, which got only 9 assembly seats in 2019, had retrieved some of the lost ground in the state. However, the increase in Congress’s vote share came at the cost of BJD and not BJP as was being expected.
The people, it seems, also rejected the BJD government’s welfare schemes which had kept it in power for the last 24 years. It became evident from the results that the public were raring for a change which they have finally brought about by voting for the BJP.
Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.
