No alliance with BJD, BJP to contest solo in Odisha

New Delhi: The BJP will contest alone in the Lok Sabha and the assembly elections in Odisha without going into any alliance with Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal.

BJP Odisha president Manmohan Samal announced on X that there will be no BJP-BJD alliance, followed by a post by BJD organisational secretary Pranab Prakash Das. Senior party leaders said that the party’s feedback did not show favourable results to an alliance, and the state unit leaders also had expressed their displeasure for a possible tie-up.

On Friday, BJP Odisha president Manmohan Samal, in a post, indicated that the saffron party will not ally with the BJD in the upcoming assembly as well as Lok Sabha polls in the state. The decision comes after two sets of key meetings the party’s leadership held with CM Naveen Patnaik’s aide, former bureaucrat Santosh Pandian.

In his post, Samal said that in Odisha, the Modi government’s welfare schemes are “not reaching the ground”. “Poor sisters and brothers of Odisha are not getting their benefits. We have concerns on many issues related to Odisha-identity, Odisha-pride and interest of the people of Odisha,” he said in his post.

He, however, added that they are thankful to Patnaik who “has been supporting” the Modi government in “many matters of national importance”, but that the BJP will contest the 147 Assembly elections and the 21 Lok Sabha seats alone.

In a similar post, a few hours later, Das said that the BJD will “continue to take decisions keeping people of Odisha in the forefront” in the "true spirit of cooperative federalism and statesmanship required for nation building”.

A senior general secretary of the BJP, involved in alliances, said that the party’s feedback system did not show any favourable result. The BJP had won eight of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state, and the party’s own assessment shows that it could win 3-4 more seats. In the assembly, too, the BJP which has 23 seats, has a chance of winning over double the seats.

The two parties also did not agree on some key seats, including the Puri seat on which the BJP thinks that spokesperson Sambit Patra has a chance to win over sitting MP from the seat, BJD’s Pinaki Mishra. The party is also likely to field Rajya Sabha MP and Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan from a Lok Sabha seat from the state.

Moreover, local unit leaders were upset about a possible alliance. “They felt that we will be ceding ground to the BJP on some key seats which we have the capacity to win on our own,” the general secretary said.

The BJD, which has been supporting the BJP in Parliament over the years, had recently helped the BJP in sending Union IT and Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to the Rajya Sabha.