BHUBANESWAR: Curtains have come down on the 25-year-rule of BJD supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in Odisha as the BJP has virtually swept both the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the state and is set to form the new government on June 10.
The impact of the poll results is not restricted to the political future of the chief minister but also that of the regional outfit that has singularly dominated the political space in the state for more than 15 years now. The party, formed by Naveen Patnaik in 1997, had come to power in the state in 2000 with BJP as its alliance partner. It gained from strength to strength even after breaking the alliance just before 2009 elections. Patnaik and his party had then developed an aura of invincibility following the continuous victories in five consecutive elections.
However, this election put a spanner in the BJD’s bid for a record sixth consecutive term in the state. Such has been the extent of BJP surge that the chief minister who had withstood the Modi wave in 2014 and 2019 elections fell to a little-known Laxman Bag of the saffron party in Kantabanji, that he contested as the second seat, by over 16,000 votes. The anti-incumbency factor against the government coupled with the health condition of the chief minister which was constantly hammered in by a well-managed BJP campaign seems to be the main reason behind the regional outfit’s debacle. The issue of ‘Odia Asmita’ (Odia pride) and the complete control of the administration by bureaucrat-turned-BJD leader VK Pandian which was continuously raised by the BJP during the campaign also played a key role in giving an upper hand to the saffron party in this election.
The BJP sweep resulted in a decisive around four per cent fall in regional outfit’s vote share to 40.19 per cent from 44.71 per cent in 2019. The saffron party’s vote share on the other hand increased by 7.5 per cent from 32.49 per cent to 40 per cent.
The BJD lost more than half of the seats it had won in 2019. BJD candidates won or were leading in 50 seats against 113 seats won in the last election. This comes to a loss of 63 seats for the regional outfit compared to the last election.
The poll saw complete erosion of BJD base in Ganjam, the home district of the chief minister. Except Hinjili, from which Naveen won by a small margin of 3,806 votes, the BJD lost other constituencies to either Congress or BJP.
The BJD’s loss of ground has been complete in Bargarh where had the party had won all the seven Assembly segments in 2019 though the Lok Sabha seat had gone to the BJP. But this time the regional outfit has lost from all the seats there. Besides the near-decimation in western Odisha, the party also fared badly in its bastion in the coastal districts. The party has suffered serious losses in its erstwhile strongholds of Kendrapara, Jagatsinghpur and Jajpur. The BJP seemed to have dented the regional outfit across the north, east, west and central Odisha.