When Santrupt Misra and Dr Datteswar Hota, nominees of the Biju Janata Dal, filed their nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha on March 5, the birth anniversary of Biju Patnaik, an unusual tableau emerged. Party supremo Naveen Patnaik stood beside leaders of the Congress and the CPI(M), hinting at a subtle but significant shift in Odisha’s political equations. The run-up to the Upper House elections has revealed an unexpected recalibration. The principal Opposition BJD, long known for its carefully cultivated ideological distance from both national parties, has now accepted Congress support to field its second candidate.
With 50 members in the Odisha Assembly, the BJD can comfortably secure one seat but needs outside support for Hota, presented as a ‘common candidate’. That label has, interestingly, become the meeting point for the BJD and Congress, a partnership that, until recently, seemed unlikely. Naveen Patnaik, typically cryptic, remarked that “time always tells future history”, while party leaders insisted the understanding was merely temporary. Politics hardly unfolds without memory and Odisha’s political past offers important clues to the present moment.
In 2000, Naveen Patnaik rose to power on a strong wave of anti-Congress sentiment. For nine years, the BJD governed in alliance with the BJP before breaking ties in 2009 after the communal violence in Kandhamal. Subsequently, Patnaik adopted the ‘equi-distance’ doctrine, maintaining formal separation from both the BJP and Congress while strengthening a distinctly regional political narrative. Over time, the BJD became Odisha’s dominant political force, although its parliamentary actions frequently indicated a tacit preference for the NDA over the Congress-led UPA.
Previous efforts to involve Patnaik in broader anti-BJP coalitions have been unsuccessful. In 2023, Trinamool Congress’s Mamata Banerjee floated the idea of a non-BJP, non-Congress Third Front; later, JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar extended an invitation to the INDIA alliance. Patnaik declined both overtures. Today, however, circumstances are different. After the 2024 electoral setback in Odisha and growing murmurs of dissent within the party, the BJD finds itself in unfamiliar terrain: out of power and confronting an assertive BJP. Political survival may now demand clearer choices. Whether the party ultimately edges toward the Congress-led opposition bloc remains uncertain. The Rajya Sabha contest and the fate of the so-called ‘common candidate’ may indicate the direction of Odisha’s evolving political landscape.