In the recent general and assembly elections in Odisha, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) registered its worst-ever performance, losing over 60 assembly seats and not even being able to open its account in the Lok Sabha seat tally. It was wiped out from its traditional strongholds of the coastal-southern Odisha region, and there was an overall dip in the state assembly vote share of about 4%.
Similarly, the Lok Sabha vote shares also declined this time. Its rival, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won 78 seats and has formed the government. Some have attributed the BJP’s electoral victory to a successful campaign on Odia Ashmita (Odia Pride). The BJP effectively highlighted BJD’s second-in-command V.K. Pandian’s Tamil identity to play on widespread fears of Tamil dominance. While BJP’s narrative has been effective, the BJD itself has created the conditions for its defeat.
Also read: Decoding BJP’s Odisha Win: ‘Overconfident’ Naveen Patnaik, Modi’s Aggressive Campaigning
This article argues that the reason behind BJD’s disappointing performance is due to several systemic problems within the party structure: the ideological vagueness of the party, the personalisation of the party and government under Naveen Patnaik, and its over-reliance on non-party cadre bases like the self-help groups (SHGs) all contributed to BJD’s electoral defeat and BJP’s emergence of Odisha’s biggest party.
Former Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik with newly sworn-in chief minister Mohan Majhi. Photo: Facebook/Naveen Patnaik.
One leader-centric party with bureaucratic power blocs
Over the years, the BJD has gradually evolved from a broad movement with many leaders into a party with power highly centralized in the hands of its leader, Naveen Patnaik. When the Biju Janata Dal was first formed in 1997, many leaders, like A.U. Singhdeo, Prasanna Acharya, and Bijoy Mohapatra, contributed to its initial growth. But, over the years, Patnaik has either sidelined these leaders or thrown them out of the party to monopolise power. The party became synonymous with Patnaik over time.
An influential committee like the “Political Affairs Committee” (PAC) within BJD was disbanded in the early 2000s after it created a power bloc that could challenge Patnaik’s authority. Editor Ruben Bannerjee profiles Patnaik in his book as a politician who is ‘wily, shrewd and clinically cold’ and removes his ministers at the ‘slightest whiff of controversy.’
Many party posts in BJD have remained vacant over a long haul as no elections were held. And, like most regional/regionalist parties, Patnaik has held on to the party president post for all these years. Pranab Prakash Das, who fielded opposite Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan in the 2024 general election, was appointed general secretary (organisation) 19 years after the post being vacant. In all these years, the BJD has grown highly one-leader-centric, and any devolution of leadership within the party was halted, which has ended up taking a toll on the party’s organisational power and the morale of the leaders in the long run.
Patnaik’s personalistic centralised style of running the party and the government was only complemented by the state bureaucracy. The government run by Patnaik based itself on the ‘bureaucratic-expert knowledge’ that James Ferguson theorises as an “Anti-politics Machine.” In the anti-politics machine, the central belief of the leader is that ‘politics’ at the local level is a hindrance to ‘development,’ and bureaucratic-expert knowledge is the only instrument that can keep politics away to rescue the retarded development of the state.
Patnaik believes in getting the work done, and so he keeps the politics of negotiation and contestation away by running a one-man show through an empowered bureaucracy and subjugated elected representatives.
In his early days, Pyarimohan Mohapatra, an IAS officer who used to be Patnaik’s secretary, helped him run the government via state bureaucracy with a few handpicked bureaucrats known for their efficiency. After Mohapatra was removed from the party in an alleged coup attempt, V.K. Pandian, another IAS officer with a strong hold over the state bureaucracy, replaced him.
A file photo of V.K. Pandian and Naveen Patnaik. Photo: X/@CMO_Odisha
Pandian eventually grew to have such power that a rumour became rife in political circles that the bureaucracy did not even allow cabinet ministers to read through the papers they were signing. In effect, Patnaik’s leadership style ran both a Patnaik-centric party and government that weakened the party’s capacity organisationally and hurt the prospects of public representatives to distribute patronage post-electoral wins.
Also read: How V.K. Pandian Scripted Naveen Patnaik’s Humiliating Electoral Loss in Odisha
A party without ideology
A second feature contributing to its electoral feat is the ideological vagueness of the BJD. The BJD was founded on the ideology of ‘Anti-congressism’ as an heir to Janata Dal in Odisha. Naveen Patnaik has iterated that BJD’s political stand is ‘equidistant’ between the BJP and Congress.
Political analyst Asim Ali calls this stand of parties like BJD and YSRCP ‘political neutrality.’ Due to this ideological neutrality, the 2019 general election in Odisha saw the classic split ticket voting; voters opted to vote for the BJD for the assembly and the BJP for the Lok Sabha seats. The BJD broke off its previous alliance with the BJP in 2008 after the Kandhamal riots, citing the BJP’s Hindutva ideological agenda as one of the reasons behind it.
However, a defensive BJD during PM Modi’s second tenure supported the BJP at the national level on every vital issue like the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act, revocation of Article 370, and even the passing of the Delhi-NCT Bill, a controversial bill that curbed the power of state governments.
The BJD also helped the BJP send Aswini Vaishnaw, a key government minister, to the parliament’s upper house. Such ideological hobnobbing with the BJP earned BJD distrust among its core voters. A narrative also became popular in Odisha that there was a bujhamana (covert understanding) between the BJP-BJD when both parties huddled for a possible pre-poll alliance. The increasing inability of BJD to carve out a unique and concrete ideology eventually caused BJD to lose its appeal to the masses.
Have self-help groups been helpful?
Despite running a highly centralised personalised party in collusion with an overt reliance on bureaucracy and without any ideological coherence, Naveen Patnaik managed to rule Odisha for a record five straight terms, and he managed to keep the party cadre motivated throughout this regime. One would find such a tight grip over the party structure somewhat puzzling, especially given the Indian context where political party loyalty is highly dynamic.
In my view, the answer to this puzzle can be found in the structure of para-state organisations like the self-help groups, which enrolled women members in hundreds of thousands. In several cases, these women ended up acting as the last mile campaigner for the party.
However, these women’s SHGs that Patnaik has set up might have ended up weakening rather than strengthening the party in this election. According to the Mission Shakti Department of the Odisha Government, as many as 70 lakh women are part of women’s SHGs, locally known as Mahila Sangha.
This programme was started by providing institutional support through micro credits, and later, the program aimed at developing entrepreneurship, leadership, and the capacity of women through these groups. Though under this programme, women SHGs are today involved in running cafeterias, paddy procurement, micro-small businesses, etc., the primary focus of its activities is still the bank loans and enabling financial access.
Providing such financial benefits and cultivating women’s leadership through Mahila Sanghas have helped the BJD cultivate a committed women’s electorate for itself. In my fieldwork in Odisha during this general election, I found that these Mahila Sanghas have been a force majeure on the ground throughout the year by bringing government programs and policies to the grassroots and especially to the women’s vote base. They supported party leaders by being present in the crowd at any event conducted by the party.
Further, they take up key roles in the party’s organisational work regarding election campaigns. Many women SHGs were involved in rallying, canvassing votes, distributing pamphlets, and even distributing money through their networks at the local level. Frequent meetings at Anganwadi centres were conducted to train the women leaders and members.
On interviewing a Maha Sangha leader (a collective of ten SHGs) regarding their campaign responsibility, she said, “We have our people from the party on every street. They work with us whenever a work order (infra-development contract) comes; we collectively contribute money together to get these development works done in our neighborhoods, and in return, when an election comes, we work with them for the MLA.” This suggests the motivation of the SHG leader to work with the party. Organizational labour is conditional to their group’s getting shares in infra-work contracts.
This focus on the SHGs came at the cost of the local male party cadres. BJD included at least five SHG women out of ten members in the renewed neighbourhood leadership structure. Male party cadres scoffed at the women-centric welfare measures. They dubbed schemes like zero-interest loans and Laccmi buses (local public buses with subsidized rates for female travelers) as freebies that lured women.
On the other hand, SHG leaders also did not work for the party openly; they remained ‘apolitical’ institutions as the election got more competitive. At this point, the BJD’s organisation, growing desperate for more visible support, incentivised every SHG by promising a lumpsum amount of interest-free loan money after election results, but only in the case of BJD’s win. Such delayed promises created massive dissatisfaction among the Mahila Sangha members throughout the state. In addition, Sujata Karthikeyan’s, IAS in-charge of Mission Shakti (also VK Pandian’s spouse), transfer during the election made a difference as the ‘patronage’ structure completely broke down.
BJP’s victory in Odisha was not simply due to the effectiveness of its campaign, but also the result of the growing weaknesses of BJD’s party structure. One-leader centralisation of the Biju Janata Dal under Patnaik, ideological vagueness of the party that created confusion among committed voters, and over-reliance on non-party cadres like SHGs (Mahila Sanghas) constituted systemic problems within the BJD party organisation that led to the comprehensive loss.
This does not mean that BJD cannot recover from this defeat. It will be interesting to see whether BJD will wither away with an ageing Naveen Patnaik or if an electoral turnaround is on the cards.
Dhiren Swain is a PhD Candidate at the DoHSS, The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He is currently working on community politics and land in Odisha. The author thanks Ward Berenschot and Sarthak Bagchi for their valuable input to this article.
