Some of the promininet leaders who have left Naveen Patnaik in the recent past to join the BJP include: Bhartruhari Mahtab, Sidhant Mohapatra, Anubhav Mohanty, Akash Das Nayak, Arindam Roy, Priyadarshi Mishra, Dambaru Sisha, Pradeep Panigrahy, Prasanta Jagadev. While some of these leaders have cited neglect within BJD as the reason for their decision, others have accused the regional party of corruption.
Odisha will see simultaneous elections to 147 assembly seats and 21 Lok Sabha constituencies in four phases starting from May 13. Naveen Patnaik has been ruling the state for over 24 years now. He took over as the chief minister for the first time in March 2000 and is currently at the end of his fifth term. The BJD is confident that he will guide the party to victory for the sixth time in a row.
But the BJP has other plans. The saffron party which has managed to replace the Congress as the main opposition party in the state, is now gearing up for the final assault – to topple the Naveen Patnaik government in Odisha.
The saffron party plans to hold as many as 100 election rallies in the state, with key speakers including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah. Odisha BJP vice-president has said that mega rallies will be held in all the 21 Lok Sabha constituencies and will be addressed by top BJP leadership.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 8 out of the 21 seats while the BJD bagged 12. One seat went to the Congress. The BJP will go all out to increase its tally in the state.
In the state assembly, the BJD was the clear winner in 2019. Naveen Patnaik’s party won 112 out of the 146 seats in the assembly, while the BJP was a distant second with 23 seats. BJP’s best performance in the assembly was in 2000 when it won 38 seats. The Congress could win only 9 assembly seats in 2019. This was the worst performance of the grand old party in the state assembly.
The BJP would hope to make electoral gains with the help of BJD turncoats. Former BJD leader Sidhant Mohapatra expressed confidence that the BJP will form government in Odisha as well as in the Centre in the upcoming assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
“The first and foremost thing, it is about the ‘Asmita’ (dignity) of Odisha and all the 4.5 crore people of Odisha. The BJD used to think that everybody was a slave to them.We don’t want to be slaves. We have our own freedom. This time, we are seeing resentment among people,” Mohapatra said.
Cuttack MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, who is now with BJP, has claimed that BJD’s fort in Odisha is “crumbling” and the party has already realised that.
Stating that BJD was formed to fight against corruption, Mahtab said “after 25 years of BJD rule, corruption is so high at the government level that it seems that Congress rule has returned to Odisha”.
This is not the first time that a regional party has lost leaders to the BJP ahead of elections. We saw in West Bengal where a number of Trinamool Congress leaders dumped Mamata Banerjee to join the saffron brigade ahead of state elections. The BJP did make considerable gains, but the Trinamool turncoats failed to help the saffron party unseat Trinamool Congress in the assembly. After the elections were over, several Trinamool Congress turncoats returned to the party fold.
Will the BJD turncoats in Odisha fare better? Well, we will know on June 4 when the mandate of people of Odisha will be out.