Take, for instance, the Puri seat, where the BJD has pitted former Mumbai police commissioner Arup Patnaik against BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra. In 2019, Patnaik, a native of Puri, had contested from Bhubaneswar and lost to the BJP’s Aparajita Sarangi by 23,839 votes. Patra, who contested from Puri, lost to the BJD’s Pinaki Misra by 11,714 votes. This time, the BJD has dropped Misra, a four-time MP.
An Odisha-based political analyst who did not want to be named told ThePrint that Puri has tremendous sentimental significance for the state. In 2019, the BJD won five of the seven assembly segments that form part of the Puri Lok Sabha constituency. The BJP won the remaining two seats.
“The BJD will go all out to retain the seat. At the same time, Patra’s stature has also gone up within the BJP since 2019. The BJP will also put its might there to wrestle the seat,” the analyst said.
There’s no such thing as a friendly fight in an election, according to Odisha BJP president Manmohan Samal. “The BJP is gearing up for a full-on fight with the BJD. On the one hand, there is an anti-wave against Naveen Patnaik and on the other hand, Modi ji’s work is being appreciated. We are confident of improving our performance compared to 2019,” he said.
In 2019, while the BJD had won 12 of the 21 seats and secured a vote share of 43.32 percent, the BJP had won in 8 seats and received 38.88 percent of the vote. The Congress managed to win only one seat with a vote share of 13.99 percent.
In Odisha, as in 2019, this year’s Lok Sabha elections and assembly polls will be held simultaneously over four phases, starting 13 May.
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Several tough contests
Sambalpur, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Kendrapara, Dhenkanal, Nabarangpur and Berhampur are among the other seats that are likely to see tough fights, with both the BJD and the BJP putting up strong candidates.
In Sambalpur in western Odisha, the BJD has pitted its organisational secretary and Jajpur MLA, Pranab Prakash Das, against Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. In 2019, the seat was won by the BJP’s Nitesh Ganga Deb, who was denied a ticket this time. Of the seven assembly seats that are part of the Sambalpur parliamentary constituency, the BJD won four seats while the BJP won three in 2019.
“Das is not from western Odisha but being the BJD’s organisational secretary, he is very resourceful. The party will put its organisational strength behind him. But the BJP’s Pradhan, being the Union education minister, also carries a lot of heft. Theoretically, the advantage is with the BJP because of the perception that if Pradhan wins, he might get a ministerial position and can do a lot more for Sambalpur. It’s unlikely that even if Das wins, he will be able to do much… he is not going to become a minister at the Centre,” said Ruben Banerjee, former editor of Outlook, who has followed Patnaik since his early days and has chronicled his political journey in his book, Naveen Patnaik.
Bhubaneswar is another seat that’s set to see a high-profile contest. Here, it’ll be between the incumbent MP, Aparajita Sarangi of the BJP, and the BJD’s Manmath Routray, who will be contesting his debut election. A commercial pilot, Manmath is the son of Suresh Routray, a Congress leader and sitting MLA from Odisha’s Jatani assembly seat — part of the Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha constituency — which he has won six times.
Although the BJP’s Sarangi won the seat in 2019, Bhubaneswar is considered a BJD stronghold. “The BJD has a strong organisational presence there, right up to the booth level. Of the seven assembly segments in the parliamentary constituency, the BJD won all but one seat in 2019. It will be a tough contest as Sarangi is also strong and won the seat in 2019,” Bhabani Sankar Tripathy, news editor of the Odia daily Sambad, told ThePrint.
Suresh Routray, Manmath’s father, had resigned from all committees of the Congress after his son joined the BJD. Now, despite still being a member of the Congress, political commentators say the MLA — who first won the Jatani assembly seat on a Janata Party ticket in 1977 — will help his son.
Kendrapara will also witness a tough contest between the BJD’s Anshuman Mohanty, a former Congress MLA who defected in February, and the BJP’s Baijayant Panda. In 2019, Panda had lost to Odia actor and BJD candidate Anubhav Mohanty.
Kendrapara is essentially a BJD stronghold. The party won all seven assembly seats that fall in this Lok Sabha constituency in 2019.
“The BJD has put up Anshuman, who is the son of Nalini Kanta Mohanty, a former working president of the BJD and influential minister in Naveen Patnaik’s cabinet before he was sacked from the party,” said a former BJD leader who did not want to be named.
However, the former BJD leader added that although Panda — who joined the BJP ahead of the 2019 elections — contested from Kendrapara and was defeated last time, his stature within the BJP has grown in the past five years. “He is a national vice president and has also been made the Uttar Pradesh in-charge for the elections. It’s going to be one of the high-profile contests,” the leader said.
In Berhampur, the BJP has put up Pradeep Panigrahy — once the right-hand man of CM Patnaik, now his vocal critic — against the BJD’s Chandra Sekhar Sahu. Panigrahy, the sitting MLA from Gopalpur, who once handled matters in the CM’s assembly seat, Hinjili, on his behalf, was expelled from the BJD in 2020 for “anti-people activities” and was later arrested by the state police in a case of alleged job fraud. He joined the BJP in February. Part of Patnaik’s home district, Ganjam, falls in the Berhampur parliamentary constituency.
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‘Strategic alliance’
Despite the tough electoral contests in the offing, former Union minister and prominent Odia politician Srikant Jena — who returned to the Congress earlier this month after being expelled in 2019 — believes the BJP and the BJD will maintain a “strategic alliance”.
“The BJD supported the BJP on all issues in Parliament… they supported Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s Rajya Sabha candidature not once but twice. PM Modi and Naveen Patnaik never attack each other. I call it a strategic alliance… irrespective of whoever wins, it’s going to be one basket,” Jena said.
According to Jena, although many of the seats will see high-profile contests, it will be a “fake fight”. “It’s one family… Can Naveen Patnaik say that the BJD will never extend support to the BJP? The CM needs to clarify if he agrees with the BJP ideologically. Unless he clarifies, it’s going to be a fake fight,” he added.
Jena said the BJP’s state unit did not want an alliance with the BJD, although the central leadership pushed for it.
“If there was an alliance, the BJP would have been sidelined in about 100 assembly seats. The BJD, very cunningly, would have pushed out the BJP in almost 100 seats. In an alliance, the BJP thought they might lose more and the BJD would have gained. That is why the alliance broke,” Jena said.
Banerjee is of the view that the BJD was keener on an alliance because it wanted to tame and silence BJP by keeping the latter on its side. “It would have given them insurance that the state government of Naveen Patnaik would continue without ED/CBI raids. By keeping the BJP on your side, you are silencing the principal Opposition. Now that has not worked. So, I think this election will be fought and then they will take it from there,” he said.
However, he added that one should not expect Patnaik and the BJP to part ways. “Post elections, it will be the same story as 2019, with the BJD supporting the BJP in all important issues in Parliament despite not being in alliance,” he said.
Support for Patnaik but anger against Pandian, ‘Modi wave’
According to political analysts, although Patnaik continues to have a lot of support in Odisha, there is palpable anger against the CM’s close aide V.K. Pandian, who took voluntary retirement from the IAS and joined the BJD last year.
Analysts say that Pandian touring the state and attending rallies on behalf of Patnaik has not gone down well with the people. “They see him as an outsider… somebody who is trying to thrust himself on the people. This is unlike the sentiment that was there for Naveen Patnaik, who formed the BJD after his father’s death. He was not considered an outsider, despite not knowing the Odia language. He was considered a son of the soil,” said the former BJD leader, quoted earlier.
The leader further said: “This election will be tough… it’s not going to be easy. There is an underlying pro-Modi wave in Odisha. Pandian’s entry has damaged the image of the BJD. The vote will not go against Naveen Patnaik, but it will be against Pandian. I think the Modi wave we are seeing in Odisha today is because of the negativity towards Pandian, not because of a positive love towards Modi.”
Banerjee concurs. “The Modi wave in Odisha has been created by the exuberance of Mr Pandian. That has not gone down well with the people. It’s the popularity of Modi versus the unpopularity of Pandian that is going to damage the BJD’s well-laid-out plans in the state,” he said.
(Edited by Rohan Manoj)
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