Odisha: After taking over as president of Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) in December 2014, Prasad Harichandan declared that his mantra would be “We, not I.” It was meant to be a fresh beginning for a party whose leaders have been busier pulling each other down rather than taking on the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which is firmly in the saddle despite facing a volley of scams in its fourth term.
More than two years later, with panchayat elections less than four months away, Harichandan leads a party riven down the middle between the organisational and legislative wings. A majority of the senior leaders and MLAs have been busy lobbying to get him ousted, and he himself has been engaged in jostling for an edge with the leader of the Opposition, Narsingh Mishra.
This is typical of the Congress story in the states, as true of Rahul Gandhi’s Congress as Indira Gandhi’s. As has happened in other states but not yet in Odisha, the Congress stands on the cusp of leaving room for other parties to steal its turf. In Odisha, it is the BJP. The days are not far when the saffron party will take over as the main opposition to the BJD. The results of the panchayat polls will indicate clearly whether the Congress will remain as the number two party in Odisha or will begin its slide from preeminence.
The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that last week a group of NSUI activists including an OPCC secretary barged into a hotel room in which an AICC general secretary, B K Hariprasad, was meeting senior leaders including the OPCC president and an AICC secretary, Subhonkar Sarkar. The NSUI leaders were protesting the “disrespect” shown to departed leader Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra.
Their allegation: none from the AICC including Hariprasad had attended Mohapatra’s funeral. The State leadership initiated moves to discipline the NSUI activists for being disrespectful to Hariprasad, but typically the action boomeranged.
The NSUI leaders ganged up with Hariprasad’s detractors. Cracks in the organisational and legislative wings of the party came to the fore back in August when the OPCC president did not attend an all-party meeting convened by Narasingh Mishra over the Mahanadi water dispute. The meeting was a great success as all political parties except the BJD and Samajwadi Party attended it.