A series of missteps led to Naveen Patnaik’s political downfall

All of a sudden, Naveen Niwas, the home office of Odisha’s outgoing Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for the last 24 years, lost its political sheen. The silence outside the building was palpable. There was no sign of people or leaders flocking. Less than a kilometre away, a similar scene played out at the swanky Sankha Bhavan, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) headquarters. The silence was emblematic of the fall of the Patnaik government, primarily on the issue of Odia Asmita (pride), which the BJD honed all these years.

The BJD suffered a huge defeat in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls primarily because the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) successfully ran a vitriolic campaign against Patnaik over his health conditions, and the dominance of his Tamil Nadu-born private secretary-turned-close aide and party leader V K Pandian over the government and the BJD.

During campaigning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who earlier this year called Patnaik a `friend’ and `popular chief minister’, asked Patnaik to name all districts in the state and their headquarters. Modi said that if the BJP were to form the government in Odisha a committee would be set up to investigate why the septuagenarian’s health deteriorated in the last year.

Alluding to Pandian, Modi also raised the controversy over the missing keys of Ratna Bhandar of the Lord Jagannath temple and remarked that the keys had reached Tamil Nadu. Patnaik’s response that Pandian was not his successor, and that he was in good health came in late in the day; by then the people had bought into the BJP’s campaign narrative.

Pandian’s growing prominence in the state government and the BJD started with Patnaik distancing himself from party colleagues following the BJD's decision to support Ashwini Vaishnaw, the BJP’s Rajya Sabha candidate from Odisha, barely weeks after the 2019 elections.

Though Patnaik appointed former Jajpur legislator Pranab Prakash Das as the BJD’s organisational secretary, Das helped Pandian who emerged as Patnaik’s virtual successor. Pandian quit serving the government in October and joined the BJD in November; this further strengthened rumours that Pandian was gaining power in the BJD.

Apart from Pandian’s rise within the BJD, what contributed to the party’s electoral failure was its lack of a credible second-rung leader. As all decisions were taken by Patnaik, the few leaders who were promoted to senior roles in recent years were not allowed to manage the party. It was clear that the BJD was far from prepared for these twin polls. This was telling for a party that had never lost any major election since its inception in 1997.

The BJD hit the campaign trail only once the pre-poll talks with the BJP failed and the national party trained its guns on the state government. The BJP made Odia pride a campaign issue and the BJD soon found itself on the defensive. Patnaik failed to inspire voter confidence or convince the voters against the BJP. Over the years the BJD had made itself irrelevant at the national level, which was reflected in its humiliating defeat in the results to the Lok Sabha polls.

Das who contested from Sambalpur, and lost, was tied down there — this meant that he could not actively campaign in other constituencies. This left Patnaik and Pandian to campaign extensively, and Pandian’s campaigns seemed to have worsened the situation for the BJD.

The inability to deny tickets to unpopular leaders and to manage dissidents who were denied tickets cost the BJD. The BJP won 20 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats and 78 of 147 Assembly seats to form the next government, while the BJD failed to win even one Lok Sabha seat and had to be content with 51 Assembly seats. The Congress retained the lone seat of Koraput and bagged 14 Assembly seats.

The BJP’s victory marks the beginning of a new chapter in Odisha’s political history. The BJD’s fall in 2024 is similar to the defeat of late Biju Patnaik in 1995 which few had anticipated before the polls.

(Prafulla Das is a Bhubaneswar-based journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.