Odisha: Crowds at Naveen Patnaik’s Outreach Tour Create Flutter in BJP Camp

Biju Janata Dal (BJD) chief Naveen Patnaik entered the 25th year of his political existence and subsequently faced a crushing defeat in the last elections. Patnaik now aims for a big bang comeback. Not to power but for political relevance.

Although chances of Patnaik coming back to power, looking at his age and seemingly frail health, are remote, the former Chief Minister is back on the streets and increasing his outreach, which he failed to do during the last election campaign.

For, the question of relevance in politics appears paramount in his scheme of things.

The BJD leader is on a whirlwind tour of a few districts taking stock of the situation on the agricultural front, crop losses due to unseasonal rains, which are so huge that a few farmers have reportedly died by suicide. Not to forget, the grinding pain of unemployment and inflation.

Patnaik has chosen this tour as a means to re-inject some energy into his political image that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dispensation is trying hard to damage through politics of negativity.

Patnaik’s itinerary included his home district Ganjam, where he received a resounding response from the people recently, who cheered him as the “only saviour” of farmers. Although, he had won the Assembly seat of Hinjli by a margin not befitting his 24 years of record win.

Patnaik also lost the Kantabanji Assembly seat in Bolangir district from where he contested for the first time. For a Chief Minister of his kind of popularity, this was an embarrassing defeat. 

Thereafter, the former Chief Minister toured Kendrapara, once his legendary father Biju Patnaik’s bastion, where the response of the people reminisced yesteryear nostalgia when people pleaded before him to save the farming sector.

Patnaik’s visit to Puri, once a BJD stronghold, now lost to the BJP, the cry among the people seeking solace must have given political stimulus to his quest of political relevance.

The huge crowds thronging his election meetings created an impression that only a sitting Chief Minister usually gets. But, sadly, all those cheers did not translate into votes in the previous polls.

Had Patnaik done such hard work during his campaigns instead of choosing proxy campaigns through one of his deputies, an IAS turned BJD heavyweight, V K Pandian, he would not have been in such quandary. 

However, what is now apparent is that Patnaik has decided to do some muscle-flexing after seven months of his defeat. This has become a reason for a quick damage control exercise by the BJP ‘double engine’ regime under Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, who rushed to these areas for band-aid solutions before Patnaik’s outreach became a raw nerve for the ruling BJP.

Since the BJP came to rule in May 2024, Majhi has tried to demean all that Patnaik had done in the state Capital Bhubaneswar and elsewhere. Sometimes, even wiping out all the visible vestiges of the past 24 years of “good work” done by the Patnaik government.

“They (BJP) have been trying hard to outsmart the good deeds by Patnaik, be it in health, communication, roads, beautification of the towns and cities”, Rabi Das, a political analyst and veteran journalist, told this writer.

The BJP’s agenda entails trying “every trick” to see that the erstwhile BJD rule loses its tag of being the country’s “fastest developing state”, under the leadership of Naveen Patnaik.

Under Patnaik, BJD focussed on roads and transport links, such as the Laxmi bus services in downtown areas. Now those bus services have been halted abruptly and the buses have been literally consigned to dustbin, foraged by rust, termites and wild foliage. Patnaik’s other flagship welfare 'Mo Bus' services have remained inactive in many interior areas for reasons not known.

“Whose money was invested on those services? The BJP should have realised that. It was money from the public exchequer”, said Sarat Patnaik, a senior Congress leader and former state party president.

One wonders why about 80 double-decker buses, each costing about Rs 3 crore, have been abandoned and are parked inside a location in Bhubaneswar and gradually being eaten up by earth, with few tires flattened and glasses cracked, relegated to a bizarre ruin.

“Is that fair politics?” questions Rabi Das, taking a jibe that “the BJP should have painted them (the buses) in saffron and pressed them back into public service in and outside the city rather than just leaving them to rot like ‘kabad (scrap)”.

With the panchayat elections due in another one-and-half years (in 2027), the BJD under Patnaik should try to repeat its record feat in the last panchayat polls, winning 766 seats out of 852 seats.

Whatever critics may say, Patnaik seems to have recaptured some momentum since the past one month. Hence, if BJD can win the upcoming panchayat polls, even if it is not able to repeat its feat in the last polls, it would be enough to put the pressure on BJP, which is yet to show some mettle on the administrative front.

“What came out of Naveen’s recent interaction is that people are still looking up for a bridge between hardship and relief in normal life, and that is what the former CM is aiming at”, pointed out a Congress leader requesting anonymity.

The writer is a freelancer based in Odisha.