Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Credit: PTI
New Delhi: After 24 years at the helm, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik appears set to hang his boots as BJP surged ahead massively in the eastern state to leading the tally in the assembly and picking 19 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats, pushing the Biju Janata Dal to the margins.
The twin elections in Odisha have emerged as one of the few silver lines for the saffron party that suffered a drubbing in several states including Uttar Pradesh, and is way short of its 2019 achievement.
In the 147 member assembly, BJP has either won or is leading in 78 seats while BJD is ahead in 51 and Congress in 14 seats.
The septuagenarian Patnaik, who was looking at the sixth term as Chief Minister, contested from two seats giving rise to speculations that he might vacate one at a later date to allow his close aide and former bureaucrat V K Pandian to enter the assembly.
Halfway past the counting, Naveen Babu is trailing at Kantabanji by 1600 votes but is ahead at Hinjli, which he has represented since 2000. An agrarian area, Hinjli in Ganjam district is a part of Aska Lok Sabha constituency.
While Biju Janata Dal has managed to secure some presence in the assembly, the regional party has been decimated by the BJP, which picked up 19 Lok Sabha seats, leaving one each for Congress and BJD.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared a congratulatory note on the Odisha victory. “Thank you Odisha! It’s a resounding victory for good governance and celebrating Odisha’s unique culture. BJP will leave no stone unturned in fulfilling the dreams of people and taking Odisha to new heights of progress. I am very proud of all our hard working Karyakartas for their efforts,” he wrote.
The BJD supremo’s failing health and his proximity to Pandian emerged as the two biggest issues in the coastal state with saffron leaders successfully running an anti-BJD campaign on the twin issue of an outsider running the state and Odia asmita (pride).
Pandian controlling the access to the Chief Minister even for ministers, MPs and MLAs has irked many senior BJD leaders and fuelled BJP’s persistent demand of installing an Odia as the next Chief Minister rather than a Tamil origin bureaucrat-turned-politician.
Most of the prominent Odia leaders like Dharmendra Pradhan, Jual Oram, Sambit Patra, Baijayant Panda, Bhartruhari Mahtab, Rudra Narayan Pany, Aparajita Sarangi and Pratap Sarangi are comfortably ahead in the race.
Naveen Babu will now go down in history as India’s second longest serving Chief Minister after Pawan Chamling of Sikkim. Incidentally Chamling also lost both the assembly seats he contested this time.