Naveen Patnaik beats Jyoti Basu as 2nd longest-serving CM after Pawan Chamling

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. (File photo)

With 23 years and 138 days in the seat of power in Odisha, Naveen Patnaik has surpassed communist patriarch Jyoti Basu as the second longest-serving chief minister in India, after Pawan Chamling of Sikkim.

Chamling ruled the Himalayan state for more than 24 years from December 12, 1994 to May 27, 2019. Basu was in the job in West Bengal from June 21, 1977 to November 5, 2000. The veteran Marxist left office after ruling the state for 23 years and 137 days.

Patnaik is also the third leader after Chamling and Basu to become the chief minister of a state for five times in a row. If the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) wins the 2024 Assembly polls, then he could be the longest-serving CM in India.

Now 76, Patnaik had started his political journey after his father and former Odisha CM Biju Patnaik’s demise in 1997. Odisha was marred in a political crisis in 1997 and then ruling Janata Dal leaders had homed in on Naveen as a consensus candidate to lead and cash in on the sympathy wave triggered by Biju's death. Patnaik was called upon to lead the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the newly formed party after his father’s name.

He won the Aska Lok Sabha seat in his home district of Ganjam and was inducted as the steel and mines minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre in 1998. In 2000, he returned to the state to contest the Assembly polls. He grabbed the opportunity created by the hugely unpopular incumbent Congress government in the state because of its mishandling of the post-super cyclone rehabilitation programme.

In 2009, the BJD launched a cash assistance programme called Kalia for women self-help groups. It formed the bulk of the party’s vote bank. In a well-calculated strategy, Patnaik used sports as a political tool to counter any sense of anti-incumbency and transformed it in pro-incumbency trend in his 23 years in power. The government hosted the men’s hockey World Cup twice in five years. It also sponsored the Indian men’s and women’s hockey teams.

The Odisha Economic Survey 2022-23 mentioned that the state economy is likely to grow at 7.8 percent during 2022-23 which is higher than the pre-Covid average growth of 7.1 percent during 2012-13 to 2019-20.

The state’s growth performance in 2022-23, despite unfavourable global conditions, is one of the highest in the country. It is also higher than the national growth rate of 7 percent for the current financial year, the report said. The growth of the state in 2021-22 was estimated at 11.5 percent.

Since 2008, the state government started doling out rice at Rs 2 per kilo to 55 lakh families below the poverty line, In 2013, the rates were further cut to Re 1 a kilo. The latest NITI Aayog report has shown that Odisha reported the fourth-highest drop in multi-dimensional poverty among states in the last half a decade.

After Narendra Modi-led NDA came to power in 2014, Patnaik tacitly supported the central government in several legislations, while smartly maintaining his image of a non-aligned leader.