BHUBANESWAR: While the BJP leaders are yet to recover from the shock, the just concluded general elections have thorougly exposed the organisational weakness of the cadre-based party.
What is more humiliating for the Saffron party is that not only all its senior leaders lost the election but were humbled by the lesser known opponets with huge margins. Most of the former BJP ministers in the Naveen Patnaik Government are placed in the third place.
Leader of BJP legislature party and former minister Biswa Bhusan Harichandan could manage to secure 11,432 votes as against 46,417 votes of Bijay Mohanty of the BJD. A political green horn, Mohanty is a new face to the voters while Harichandan is a well known political figure in the State.
Interestingly, Jagannath Pradhan, the rebel BJP candidate polled 8,159 votes in Bhubaneswar-central.
Former minister Samir Dey who was representing the prestigious Cuttack city (Cuttack-Barabati after reorganisation) for the last three consecutive terms also faced a humiliating deafeat.
Dey secured 15,131 votes while Debashis Samantary, the BJD winner, was far ahead with over 52,000 votes. Congress nominee Suresh Mohapatra secured second position with over 27,000 votes.
Similar is the condition of former ministers Manmohan Samal and Golak Naik who tried their luck from Bhandaripokhari and Baripada respectively.
For Samal the situation was different.
As Dhamnagar (his constituency) was made a reserved constituency after delimitation, he was contemplating to fight from Chandbali. However, he opted for Bhandaripokhari at the last moment.
Two other former ministers - Pradip Naik and Surama Padhi - too bit the dust in this election. Only two of them survived the Naveen wave, KV Singhdeo from Patnagarh and Jayanarayan Mishra from Sambalpur.
Many in the party blamed the senior party leaders for the debacle. Senior leaders who were at the helms of affairs of the party remained completely detached from party oranisations after becoming ministers in the Naveen Patnaik government, said a party insider.
While it is an admitted fact that the break up of alliance with the BJD cost the party dearly, the sources said that the election results clearly indicated that the party cadres did not extend the desired support for obvious reasons.
Interestingly, many new faces in western Orissa have performed better than some of the senior leaders.