The five-term chief minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik, with his uninterrupted 24 years in office since 2000, was widely expected to get a record sixth term this time around. Instead, he was routed.
His Biju Janata Dal (BJD) got only 51 seats in the 147-member state assembly. Its main rival, the BJP, with 78 seats, got a clear majority to form a government in the state.
Patnaik himself was shockingly defeated in the Kantabanji assembly constituency in western Odisha, though he won in Hinjili with a small margin of a little over 4,600 votes.
Interestingly, the BJD with a 40.22% vote share got less assembly seats than the BJP, which got a 40.07% vote share. The Congress, which ruled the state for several decades before Patnaik’s advent in 2000, was consigned to a distant third position but very surprisingly got 14 seats this time, five more than its 2019 tally of nine.
Strikingly, the BJP, which got a majority in the assembly, swept the state in polls for the Lok Sabha by winning 20 of the 21 seats, with only one seat won by the Congress. In 2019, the BJP won just eight seats from the state. In contrast, the BJD, which secured 12 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, could not win a single seat this time.
The single most important factor behind this debacle for the BJD and Patnaik is the dominant role played by V.K. Pandian.
An IAS officer of the 2000 batch who served as private secretary to CM Patnaik for over two decades, Pandian took voluntary retirement in October 2023. He joined the BJD thereafter and was given the rank of a cabinet minister.
That angered many BJD leaders, who felt they were not been recognised or rewarded despite having served the party for years.
As a serving bureaucrat, Pandian played a crucial role in the affairs of the state and of the BJD. He helped select BJD candidates for the assembly as well as the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Even senior state ministers and party functionaries needed to make an appointment to meet him.
Patnaik had such enormous confidence in Pandian that he had a free hand to take key decisions that decisively impacted both the governance of the state and the BJD’s activities. It was he as a bureaucrat, and not Patnaik, who addressed spokespersons of the BJD.
Also read: Odias Like Naveen Patnaik; But Will They Also Like His Apparent Heir Pandian?
Nothing moved in the government and the BJD without clearance from Pandian.
Pandian remained the nucleus of the core team consisting of one serving IPS officer D.S. Kuttey, belonging to 1997 batch, and current BJD Rajya Sabha MP Manas Mangaraj. The three together decided the party’s ticket distribution this time.
Pandian emerged as a star campaigner of the BJD during the election and this not only angered the party’s rank and file, but made him a prominent and easy target for the BJP – as he is not from Odisha but Tamil Nadu.
Contracts to execute major projects in the state involving hundreds of crores of rupees were often given to firms from Tamil Nadu and people developed a perception that Pandian was solely responsible for it. Even non-Odia bureaucrats were assigned key responsibilities and people believed that Pandian had a role in deciding them.
Even before the elections, he flew to every district in a helicopter ostensibly to hear the people’s grievances. There was mounting public anger against him for remaining so dominantly visible while consigning MPs, MLAs and ministers to oblivion.
When Pandian campaigned extensively, it was assumed that he might succeed Patnaik. Just before the last phase of the elections, he denied it; but it was too late to change the public perception.
The uncritical support Patnaik provided to the Modi regime in the last ten years on every issue also made people think that if the BJD was surrendering before the BJP, perhaps it was better to vote directly for the BJP itself.
Combined with this sentiment was massive anti-incumbency against the BJD’s candidates – most of whom had contested and won in 2019. For the Lok Sabha’s seats, there were some candidates who were picked up from the BJP and given a ticket the very next day. That was not accepted by the people.
The BJD was founded to fulfil the vision of Biju Patnaik, who was known for his critical stand against the BJP. In fact, he would have been shocked to see his son, Naveen, extending blind support to the Modi regime since 2014.
Such factors played a key role in the BJD’s fall. Pandian’s overwhelming domination in both government and BJD affairs proved to be a fatal blow to the party.
S.N. Sahu served as officer on special duty to former President K.R. Narayanan.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
