Naveen Patnaik, who hegemonised Odisha politics for almost a quarter-century, faced an unexpected defeat in 2024. With the end of the Patnaik era, a new one begins with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s resounding victory in Odisha. Although a few pollsters predicted some downslide for Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal in the Assembly elections, a defeat was certainly not predicted. In a 147-member Odisha Assembly, while the BJP got an absolute majority with 78 seats, the BJD managed only 51. The BJD’s defeat was made more humiliating by the BJP winning 20 out of 21 Lok Sabha seats; even the lone remaining seat went to the Congress.
Patnaik’s defeat needs to be explained in a historical and political context. Odisha, an outlier in national politics, often throws up political surprises. After Independence, when the “Congress system” dominated India, Odisha challenged the national trend by raising anti-Congress political bulwarks like the Ganatantra Parishad and its later incarnation, the Swatantra Party. The post-Nehru era saw the rise of a charismatic Biju Patnaik, who left Congress, invoked his Odia identity and experimented with regional formations like Utkal Congress. He later became one of the architects of the Janata Party to challenge Indira Gandhi’s Indian National Congress (R).
His son Naveen, carrying his father’s legacy forward, overthrew the Congress in 2000 and became the chief minister — he has not looked back since. Soon, he became the unchallenged leader of the BJD and Odisha. People loved him across regions and sections and elected for five consecutive terms. Congress as well as the BJP (since the BJD-BJP break up in 2009) became more or less redundant in Odisha politics. Then, what accounts for his defeat?
What BJD did wrong
Governance failure is an unlikely reason, given how Odisha is acknowledged as a finely-governed state in India. Patnaik has earned many laurels for poverty elimination, successful welfare schemes for all, rural and urban development, women’s empowerment, disaster control, science and technology, investment attraction, heritage preservation, sports and international collaboration.
Second, a well-educated, suave and soft-spoken political leader like Patnaik is a rare breed in Indian politics. Ironically, he is known to be intolerant towards his own party colleagues who challenge his authority. This is perhaps because of the betrayal he faced at the hands of colleagues he trusted. Mistrust made him rely on a coterie of bureaucrats, of whom V K Pandian, a Tamil Odisha-cadre civil servant, emerged as his trusted aide in the last decade. This became a double-edged sword. While a bureaucrat-driven development model delivered and boosted his popularity, concentration and personalisation of power pushed some talented leaders like Baijayant Panda to the BJP and alienated many within the party.
Third, his defeat signals a vote for change. In a democracy, a long rule brings in arrogance, overconfidence, intolerance, inaccessibility, complacency and fatigue for the leadership and the party. Both Narendra Modi and Patnaik became victims of these symptoms, though in differing degrees and proportions. Popular support declined for both; Modi managed to survive with an alliance, Naveen had no backup.
In Odisha, anticipating danger, Modi constantly hammered at and discredited the Opposition, often crossing the line of decency. He did not even spare Patnaik, despite the BJD’s constant support to the ruling party to pass bills in Parliament. At one point, the BJP and BJD were in serious talks to go to the 2024 polls in Odisha as partners. Patnaik failed to gauge the BJP’s challenge, underestimated its strength and was thus caught off-guard. He was also no match for the party’s vitriolic campaign, refusing to play to the gallery with indiscreet and acrimonious language against political opponents.
Patnaik also made a blunder by not controlling dissidents, leaving out key party leaders in making political strategy and campaign, and using Pandian as lead campaigner. The BJP and his own party dissidents invoked their Odia identity against Pandian and portrayed him as Patnaik’s political successor. As the BJD failed to counter the veracity of this propaganda, the party’s support base got dented.
A new era: The road map and challenges
Patnaik’s defeat indicates a different political trend. While the BJP failed to dent key regional party bastions like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu despite a hard political campaign, it decimated Odisha, once an impregnable regional bastion. Many observers believe that the BJP got it by default as the people of Odisha wanted a change in the government and the ruling BJD made it possible to script its own defeat; the BJP benefitted from the direct contest between the two. It is also to be noted that BJP’s victory may be seen as a lifeline to Modi’s third term as prime minister; 10 seats less in Odisha would have made Modi 3.0 more vulnerable. Odisha counts for Modi.
The BJP’s victory must not be dismissed as a cakewalk. This is the outcome of the hard work of the Sangh Parivar over half a century across the state and across communities — students, workers, Adivasi and Dalit communities, women, and peasants. Unlike north India, where the BJP may invoke anti-Muslim rhetoric to garner votes, such a strategy has a limited appeal in Odisha with minuscule Muslim and Christian populations. Hence, the BJP’s victory needs to be seen through a positive lens; it played the role of the Opposition, cultivating people’s struggle for their everyday issues rather than depending on polarising rhetoric.
What BJP did right
The BJP has credible political and administrative experience. Its forerunner, the Jana Sangh had four MLAs in 1977; its leader Biswabhusan Harichandan, the present governor of Chhattisgarh, was a minister in the Janata Party government. The BJP was a pro-active coalition partner in Patnaik’s government from 2000-2009 with a fairly high share in the cabinet. Despite the break-up with the BJD and its political marginalisation, it continued to mobilise the cadre and the people against Patnaik government’s policies. Modi’s cabinet gave berths to Odisha’s leaders like Dharmendra Pradhan, Jual Oram and Pratap Sarangi. More significantly, Droupadi Murmu, an Adivasi BJP woman MLA, was elevated to Governor and then the President of India. So, the BJP, despite being out of power in the state, had maintained an impressive profile, locally as well as nationally.
Against this background, the BJP begins a new era by nominating Mohan Charan Majhi, an Adivasi leader and a four-time MLA, as the chief minister. Majhi is neither a pushover nor a political novice, unlike some of Modi’s other picks, like the chief minister of Rajasthan. Coming from a modest family with an RSS background, Majhi rose from grassroots politics to achieve an impressive record as a parliamentarian and spokesperson of the BJP. His nomination, besides being strategic, is the BJP’s tribute to the 22 per cent of tribal population in the state. Keeping regional, caste and gender balance in perspective, the BJP has appointed two deputy chief ministers: Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo and Pravati Parida. While Singh Deo comes from the erstwhile royal family of Western Odisha, Pardia, an OBC woman, hails from the coastal district. Singo Deo is a veteran legislator with long administrative experience as a minister; Parida, though a first-time MLA, has been a loyal worker and a well-known woman leader of the party for decades. Thus, the BJP has struck the right balance by weaving caste, tribe, gender, region and governance together.
The challenges before the BJP are plenty: It did not project any chief minister during the campaign and the party sought votes in the name of Modi and his guarantee. Odisha will be the first test case for Modi’s guarantee, where people will expect the rhetoric to be transformed into action. This will be juxtaposed with Patnaik’s successful welfare schemes. A real challenge for the new government will be to prove that their governance is better than Patnaik’s.
Second, the government has to give priority to employment generation, rural distress, migration, participatory and inclusive governance. Third, people also expect that the double-engine government will make Odisha prosperous by allocating more resources, bringing new industries and investments, and making it a manufacturing hub and a knowledge corridor. Fourth, while the PMO in Modi 3.0 will continue to monitor governance like other BJP-ruled states, identity-conscious Odias do expect less central interference and more autonomy for state leaders. Otherwise, the same identity campaign may boomerang quickly. Finally, despite having an absolute majority, the BJP has to deal with an Opposition which is numerically strong and deeply entrenched in the state. As Patnaik still remains a cult figure, the BJP needs to tread with caution.
The writer is assistant professor at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies
