Bhubaneswar: The tectonic shift in Odisha’s political landscape in 2024 ended the nearly 25-year rule of the thought-to-be invincible Naveen Patnaik government with the BJP coming to power for the first time in the state.
This was Patnaik’s first election defeat, which not only reduced his BJD to 51 seats from the 113 it won in 2019 but also wiped it out of the Lok Sabha as it failed to win any of the 21 constituencies in the simultaneous polls.
Patnaik, the five-time chief minister of the coastal state, lost in the Kantabanji seat to BJP’s Laxman Bag by over 16,000 votes and managed to keep the Hinjili assembly segment by a narrow margin of around 4,000 votes.
The BJP won 78 seats in the 147-member assembly, while the Congress secured 14 seats. The CPI(M) won one seat, while three Independent candidates also won. Though the BJP scripted history by carpet bombing the campaign trail with its top leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it secured a marginally lesser vote share of 40.07 per cent against BJD’s 40.22 per cent.
As the BJP stormed to power riding on the narrative of ‘Odia Asmita’, portraying BJD as a party run by “outsider” VK Pandian, a Tamil IAS officer close to Patnaik who left bureaucracy and joined politics only to quit after the electoral debacle, it sprung a surprise by giving the responsibility of running the government to a relatively lesser-known face, Mohan Charan Majhi.
After taking over as the chief minister, Majhi, a tribal leader from Keonjhar, in his first cabinet meeting decided to reopen all four gates of the revered Jagannath temple in Puri as promised by the BJP ahead of the elections. He also opened the doors of the temple’s treasury or Ratna Bhandar after 46 years for inventory and repair, besides approving a corpus of Rs 500 crore for the safety, security and beautification of the temple.
The new government also approved an MSP of Rs 3,100 per quintal of paddy and launched a financial assistance scheme for women, Subhadra Yojana, under which those in the age group of 21-60 will be given Rs 50,000 over five years.
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On the other side, Patnaik took over as the leader of the opposition amid strong disgruntlement within the ranks of the BJD. The pre-poll trend of BJD leaders joining the BJP continued with two Rajya Sabha MPs — Mamata Mohanta and Sujeet Kumar — switching over to the ruling camp and getting re-elected in the by-elections. It brought down BJD’s Rajya Sabha tally to seven and bolstered the BJP’s strength in the Upper House.
Amid criticism, Patnaik defended Pandian, recognising his “excellent work” and putting the blame for the debacle to BJP’s “negative campaign”.
“I admit that the BJD could not successfully counter their lies, their negative campaign, and false narratives on social media. Now, people are realising that they came to power by making false promises,” he said on December 26, six months after remaining out of power.
Notwithstanding the dwindling popularity, BJD was somewhat successful in cornering the government on multiple issues, including the safety of women after an army officer and his fiancée were allegedly assaulted by police in custody.
The incident happened September 15 when the couple went to the Bharatpur police station in Bhubaneswar to lodge a complaint over a road rage incident. It was alleged that the army officer was beaten up, and his fiancée was dragged into a cell where some male police personnel thrashed and molested her.
Amid uproar over the incident, the government suspended five police personnel, handed over the investigation to the Crime Branch and constituted a judicial commission.
The state also got a new governor this year in Kambhampati Hari Babu, who replaced Raghubar Das. Das, the former CM of Jharkhand, resigned after staying in office for barely 14 months amid months of public outcry over his son allegedly assaulting an on-duty government officer.
The incident happened at the Raj Bhavan in Puri in July as the new BJP-led government hosted a mega Rath Yatra that saw the participation of President Droupadi Murmu. It was alleged that the governor’s son Lalit Kumar and his four friends assaulted Assistant Section Officer Baikuntha Pradhan.
The Rath Yatra in Puri also broke the tradition this year and was held over two days, but the idol of Lord Balabhadra falling on servitors while being taken out from the chariot during the ‘Pahandi’ ritual outside the Gundicha temple overshadowed the mega arrangements. Nine people were injured in the accident, which gave the opposition enough ammo to attack the government.
Another tropical cyclone, ‘Dana’, hit the state this year, in November, but Majhi’s government was successful in ensuring ‘zero casualty’ and minimum damage.
The state hosted the all-India DGP-IGP conference and the Indian Navy’s ‘Operational Demonstration’ on the occasion of Navy Day at the Puri beach.
PTI
