Odisha Assembly Polls 2019: CM for 19 years, Naveen Patnaik looks to nip BJP's ambitions in the bud

Odisha will head to polls in four phases throughout April. The first phase is scheduled for April 11, while the second, third and fourth phases will be held on April 18, April 23 and April 29 respectively.

The coastal state, helmed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for 19 years now, will head to polls simultaneously along with the general elections.

Odisha has 147 assembly constituencies and 21 Lok Sabha constituencies. During the 2014 elections in the state, Patnaik's Biju Janata Dal (BJD) had won 117 seats, while the Congress was the second largest party with 16 seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had managed to win only 10 of the 147 seats.

Odisha's politics 

The politics of Odisha, before Patnaik's entry, was dominated by Congress, and Congress stalwarts like Janaki Ballabh Patnaik, Biju Patnaik, Hemanand Biswal and Giridhar Gamang among others.

However, Biju Patnaik left the Congress in 1969 to form the Utkal Congress, which was later merged into the Janata Party.

Congress' rule reigned supreme in the state, with leaders like Janaki Patnaik making a personal fortress out of the state. The state had a non-Congress government thrice before the BJD came to power.

Congress governments in the state were widely accused of being corrupt and inefficient, with crime and poverty on a rise.

It was against this background that the reign of Naveen Patnaik started in 2000, when he resigned as a Union minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government to become the chief minister of Odisha.

While it may be argued that the base for Patnaik's entry into politics was laid down by his father, Biju, who served twice as the CM of the state, the Patnaik family story is a little different.

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According to reports, after the death of Biju Patnaik in 1997, Naveen's two siblings were asked whether they would like to enter politics, but both declined. It was then that Naveen expressed his wish to contest, and was elected from Aska parliamentary constituency in the by-election that followed his father's death.

Naveen founded the BJD in 1997, and stormed to power in 2000. The BJD was in alliance with the BJP for nine years from 2000, but Patnaik had pulled out from the alliance before the 2009 polls.

BJD has dominated Odisha's political discourse for the past two decades. The Congress, meanwhile, has been effectively sidelined, and the BJD even managed to dodge the 'Modi wave' of 2014 to retain the state.

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Key Parties

Biju Janata Dal (BJD): The BJD first came to power in 2000, and has remained in government ever since. The BJD's success is attributed largely to Patnaik.

With 19 years in power, the 72-year-old Patnaik, has recognised the threat of anti-incumbency and is working to prevent a BJP surge in the state.

One of the first things he did was to announce 33 percent reservation for women candidates in his party for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. This was to cater to his primary vote bank: the women of Odisha.

Patnaik has, however, remained non-committal on whether the same quota can be applied by the BJD for the assembly elections.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): The BJP had set its eyes on Odisha from as far back as 2014, when it got 10 seats in the assembly polls and one seat in the Lok Sabha polls. That one seat, however, was the sole seat that the BJD had lost in its sweep of the state.

The BJP also held its two-day National Executive meeting in Bhubaneshwar in 2018, a signal to the BJP cadre that Odisha was one of its top priorities.

The BJP also has reasons to believe that it can improve its tally in the assembly. During the panchayat elections held in 2017, the BJP won 473 of the 853 zila parishad seats. The BJP believes that this is an indication of what is to follow during the assembly and the general elections.

Congress: Once a bastion, Congress is now a pale shadow of itself in the state.

According to reports, the party is battling infighting. Even though it had come in second after the BJD during the 2014 polls, Congress had failed to win even a single seat from Odisha in the Lok Sabha polls.

The panchayat elections also saw Congress being reduced to a third position, managing to bag only 60 seats, down by 50 percent.