In the run-up to the simultaneouselections held to the Assembly and the Lok Sabha in Odisha, Chief Minister and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president Naveen Patnaik told journalists that he had no national ambitions and his interest was to see to the State’s development and the welfare of its people. In his public meetings he told people that they were his family members and he would continue to serve the State until his last breath. The people of Odisha seemed to have responded in kind and voted overwhelmingly for the BJD, helping the party secure a comfortable majority in the Assembly and perform rather well in the Lok Sabha election. The mandate is for a fifth consecutive term as Chief Minister for the charismatic Patnaik.
Even though many voters got swayed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s narrative on nationalism and voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha seats, the 21-year-old regional party virtually repeated its performance in the Assembly elections held in 2014. The BJD won 112 of the 146 Assembly seats for which elections were held (election to one seat in the 147-member Assembly was postponed following the death of a candidate), the BJP 23, the Congress nine and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) one. An independent is also among the winners. The BJD’s tally in the 2014 Assembly elections was 117; the Congress won 16 seats and the BJP 10 then.
The BJD won 12 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the State this time, while the BJP bagged eight and the Congress one. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the BJD won 20 seats and the BJP one. Patnaik expressed his deep gratitude to the people of the State, especially women, who blessed the BJD “time and time again”. He also thanked the people for not responding to the so-called Modi wave to a large extent.
Hard work and strategy
The road to victory for the BJD was not at all smooth this time, with the party having to battle the anti-incumbency factor against Patnaik’s 19-year-old government. Many of his party colleagues found it tough to ward off the weariness among voters because of their repeated presence in the Assembly and Parliament.
Moreover, the 72-year-old bachelor politician had to combat a resurgent BJP across Odisha. He stayed overnight at places far from the capital Bhubaneswar and campaigned hard in every nook and cranny of the State. Braving the scorching sun, Patnaik held roadshows covering around 1,000 km and addressed over 120 meetings.
And when the results were out, many of Patnaik’s party colleagues were taken by surprise that their leader’s predictions had come true. Patnaik’s hard work and strategy not only countered BJP national president Amit Shah’s avowed intention to win 120 Assembly seats in Odisha but also kept the saffron party’s efforts to sweep the Lok Sabha election in the State. It also proved Modi wrong—the Prime Minister had said that Odisha would spring a surprise as Tripura did in the Assembly elections held last year.
Patnaik’s charisma also helped his party enhance its vote percentage from the previous Assembly elections though it decreased a little with regard to the Lok Sabha. The BJD vote share rose to 44.71 per cent from the 43.4 per cent in 2014. The corresponding figure for the BJP is 32.5 per cent (18 per cent in 2014). The Congress vote share decreased to 16.12 per cent from 25.7 per cent in 2014.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the BJD’s vote share was 44.77 per cent, the BJP’s 21.88 per cent and the Congress’ 26 per cent. This time it is 42.76 per cent, 38.37 per cent and 13.81 per cent respectively.
In fact, the rise in the BJP’s vote share can be attributed not just to the Modi wave but also to the lacklustre campaign of the Congress. Only a few Congress candidates put up strong fights at the individual level. With the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee practically moribund, party president Rahul Gandhi attended only two meetings, at Bargarh on March 15 and at Balasore on April 25.
Furthermore, by keeping itself focussed on Odisha since it emerged as the BJD’s main rival in the State in the panchayat elections in the State in 2017, the BJP had been sending its Central Ministers to visit the State frequently. During their numerous visits, two Central Ministers from the State, Jual Oram and Dharmendra Pradhan, kept accusing the BJD government of corruption and criticising Patnaik’s dependency on bureaucrats. As the Congress failed to put its house in order after coming third in the panchayat elections, the BJP tried its best to strengthen its party organisation by taking several Congress leaders into its fold. It also kept attracting disgruntled BJD leaders to build an anti-Patnaik mood in the State when elections got nearer. And finally the saffron party was able to rope in former BJD Member of Parliament Baijayant Panda a few weeks before the elections. With Panda’s induction, the BJP also won the tacit support of Panda’s family-owned Odia news channel, which has a large viewership.
The saffron party inducted former BJD Minister Damodar Rout, who was ousted from the party. The BJP also brought back into its fold Bijoy Mohapatra, who had resigned from the party a few months earlier after being in the party for almost 10 years. He was a Minister in the Biju Patnaik Cabinet. The BJP also inducted and fielded several BJD leaders who quit the party after being denied the ticket to contest the elections.
However, Patnaik was able to check the party-switching to some extent at the last minute. After a few of his party leaders joined the BJP after being denied the ticket, he took a huge risk and let sitting legislators and Lok Sabha members contest for another term.
Still, the BJP tried its best to snatch power from Patnaik by cashing in on the anti-incumbency factor and by riding on Modi’s leadership. Modi himself addressed nine rallies across the State and Amit Shah attended 14. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and several other Central leaders of the party joined the campaign in Odisha.
That the polling was spread over four phases— April 11, 18, 23 and 29 —also helped BJP leaders to campaign in the State extensively.
As a result, the Modi wave was pitted against Patnaik’s charisma across the State, with the Congress hardly making an impact on the campaign front. When many BJP leaders, including Modi, kept asking people to vote for their party in order to have a double-engine government (BJP governments both at the Centre and the State) for faster development of the State, Patnaik, the lone star campaigner of his party, fought back with the question as to why the BJP was not projecting a chief ministerial candidate.
A day after Modi said at an election rally in Kendrapara that the BJD government would be voted out, a confident Patnaik responded with an invitation to the Prime Minister to attend his swearing-in ceremony.
With Patnaik’s bold approach in facing the saffron challenge towards the end of the campaign in the first phase of the elections, the BJP cleverly changed its narrative at the grass-roots level and urged people to vote for Modi in the Lok Sabha no matter for whom they voted for in the Assembly.
Significantly, of the eight Lok Sabha seats the BJP won in the State, as many as five were from constituencies bordering Hindi-speaking States such as Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where the saffron party performed unexpectedly well by riding the Modi wave.
Even when the BJD won all seven Assembly segments in the Bargarh Lok Sabha constituency in western Odisha, the BJP bagged the Lok Sabha seat by 63,939 votes. The other Lok Sabha constituencies adjoining the two neighbouring States the BJP won are Kalahandi, Sambalpur, Sundargarh and Mayurbhanj.
Such was the swing in favour of Modi that Jual Oram won by 2,23,065 votes in the Sundargarh Lok Sabha constituency over his immediate rival and BJD nominee Sunita Biswal, daughter of former Chief Minister Hemananda Biswal. While Sunita Biswal got 2,76,991 votes, the Congress nominee and firebrand tribal leader George Tirkey bagged 2,68,218 votes. Oram’s margin was only 18,829 in the 2014 parliamentary election, while the BJD’s Dilip Tirkey got 3,21,679 votes and Hemananda Biswal of the Congress got 2,69,335 votes.
The pattern of voting in favour of the BJP for the Lok Sabha and the BJD for the Assembly was also evident in the Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha constituency where former Indian Administrative Service officer and BJP candidate Aparajita Sarangi won by 23,839 votes, defeating former Mumbai Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik of the BJD. The Congress did not field any candidate here as it had shared the seat with the CPI(M), whose nominee Janardan Pati got only 23,026 votes. Interestingly, the BJD won in six of the seven Assembly segments in the Bhubaneswar parliamentary seat.
Significantly, the BJD fought the BJP as its main rival in coastal Odisha for the first time. It used to be between the BJD and the Congress in the State’s coastal area in the previous elections.
The regional party also performed well in the Assembly constituencies reserved for the Scheduled Castes (S.C.) and the Scheduled Tribes (S.T.). The BJD won 22 of the 25 seats reserved for the S.C. and 25 of the 34 seats reserved for the S.T.
The BJD won Puri, Jagatsinghpur, Cuttack, Jajpur, Kendrapara, Keonjhar, Dhenkanal, Kandhamal, Aska, Berhampur, Bhadrak and Nabarangpur, while the BJP bagged Kalahandi, Bolangir, Bargarh, Sambalpur, Sundargarh, Mayurbhanj, Balasore and Bhubaneswar. The Congress won Koraput.
The prominent winners in this Lok Sabha election are Jual Oram from Sundargarh and Bhartruhari Mahtab from Cuttack and Pinaki Mishra from Puri, both of the BJD. The prominent losers include the BJP’s national spokesperson Sambit Patra, who contested from Puri, and Baijayant Panda, who contested from Kendrapara.
Focus on welfare
What helped Patnaik to be seen as a popular mass leader yet again? It was primarily his focus on women’s empowerment and welfare of the tribal people, farmers and the youth. Determined to carry the BJD to a fifth consecutive victory, Patnaik banked on women voters by continuing with his favourite Mission Shakti programme, which has more than 70 lakh women members in more than six lakh women’s self-help groups (SHGs) spread across the State. Several months before the election, Patnaik also campaigned for ensuring 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament and State legislatures. He sent his party leaders to meet top leaders of different parties in the country in support of the cause.
When the elections came, Patnaik stuck to his word and gave 33 per cent of the party ticket to women in the Lok Sabha seats. They include Pramila Bisoyi, an SHG worker, who won from the Aska Lok Sabha seat. Five of the seven women candidates that BJD fielded emerged winners. Two women candidates from the BJP too won the election.
In a bid to retain women voters’ support, Patnaik launched his party’s Ghare Ghare Sankha (party symbol conch in every home) programme a few weeks before the election. The programme was implemented through the Biju Mahila Janata Dal, the BJD’s women’s wing, by involving SHGs in every village. Women’s wing activists visited households and handed over a sticker of the party symbol along with a form to collect people’s views over the State government’s performance and expectations from the party in future. The party also sought suggestions on what demands it should put forth before the Centre. The suggestions were included in the party’s manifesto for the elections.
KALIA scheme
The Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) scheme for farmers, launched by Patnaik a few months before the election, also helped him substantially in addressing agrarian distress in the State. More than 37 lakh farmers, sharecroppers and agricultural labourers were extended financial benefits under the scheme, but it hit a roadblock because of the enforcement of the model code of conduct. Patnaik criticised the BJP for blocking its implementation and assured the farmers that they would be paid financial assistance for two crop seasons (Rs.10,000) together a day after his party returned to power.
Naveen Patnaik, who made an entry into politics with a byelection to the Lok Sabha in 1997 that was necessitated by the death of his father, Biju Patnaik, continues to maintain his popularity by focussing on pro-poor issues since he first took charge as Chief Minister in March 2000.
The regional satrap also successfully highlighted his government’s achievements during the first four terms in order to fight the anti-incumbency sentiment. Claiming that his government had adopted the 2014 BJD manifesto as government policy and worked towards fulfilling the promises in it, Patnaik promised that the party’s manifesto for this election would also be accepted as the government’s policy for development in the years to come.
Patnaik never stopped criticising successive governments at the Centre for neglecting Odisha. He blamed Central leaders of his rival national parties for visiting Odisha only during elections and not during cyclones or floods. The BJD president, who snapped his party’s ties with the BJP in the run-up to the 2009 election, also blamed the BJP for not keeping the promise in its 2014 manifesto to grant special category status for Odisha.
Patnaik pointed out that Odisha had one of the worst railway networks in the country when the Indian Railways was earning Rs.20,000 crore from the State. Is it not Central negligence, he asked.
In his brief speeches at public meetings, Patnaik also alleged that the Central government was collecting thousands of crores of rupees as revenue from the coal sector and what Odisha got in return was only pollution and dust. On river water disputes, he alleged that the Centre had supported the erstwhile BJP government in Chhattisgarh when the latter stopped water from the Mahanadi river to Odisha and that his government had to approach the Supreme Court for justice. In the case of the Polavaram project too, the BJP government had supported Andhra Pradesh, he said.
Patnaik also countered the criticism by BJP leaders in the State by saying that they were aware of the Centre’s stepmotherly attitude towards Odisha but did not have the courage to discuss that with their party high command. “They cannot fight for the rights of Odisha as they are controlled by their high command in New Delhi. The BJD is of Odisha and our high command is the people of Odisha. We have been fighting for Odia pride and the interests of Odisha,” he said.
As for him, Patnaik stayed connected to the masses by asking a simple question wherever he went to address a meeting: “I have come to your place, are you people happy?” As soon as the crowd gave a positive response, he promptly responded saying: “I am happy too.” Even after the election results are out, this question of Patnaik, “ Apana mane khusi ta ” (Are you people happy?), remains popular among people.
Political analysts feel that Patnaik could defy the Modi wave for two major reasons: his clean image and the fact that both his major rivals are national parties that can never join hands. They attribute the BJP’s increased vote share to Congress supporters who voted for the saffron party after losing hope in their State leadership.
The BJD founded by Patnaik in December 1997 has been winning the majority of seats in all the Lok Sabha, Assembly and other elections since then. Patnaik has also been successful in creating a strong regional identity by highlighting Brand Odisha over the last 19 years. The successful hosting of the 2018 Men’s Hockey World Cup in Bhubaneswar has added to the State’s stature.
Patnaik may continue to remain popular for years to come if his new government is able to keep corruption under check and ensure proper implementation of the various welfare schemes.
