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BJD, Congress unite against BJP in Odisha RS polls, end 3-way rivalry
Five candidates file nominations for four Rajya Sabha seats as BJD and Congress back a joint nominee to counter BJP in Odisha Assembly
Bhubaneswar: Five candidates, including state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Manmohan Samal and BJD leader Santrupt Mishra, on Thursday filed nominations for four Rajya Sabha seats from the state, setting the stage for a keen contest as the Congress and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) backed a common candidate, reshaping the state’s once-familiar three-cornered political rivalry.
BJP candidates Samal, sitting Rajya Sabha MP Sujeet Kumar, and independent candidate and former Union minister Dilip Ray, who is backed by the party, filed their nominations at the State Legislative Assembly in the presence of chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi and senior BJP leaders.
Biju Janata Dal candidates Santrupt Misra and urologist Datteswar Hota, whom the party has positioned as common candidates with the support of the Congress party, filed their nominations at the State Legislative Assembly in the presence of BJD president and former chief minister Naveen Patnaik and state Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief Bhakta Charan Das.
The elections are scheduled to be held on March 16.
In the 147-member Odisha Assembly, the ruling BJP, commanding 82 votes, can comfortably secure two of the four seats. The BJD, with approximately 50 MLAs following the suspension of two legislators, has enough to win exactly one seat for party president Patnaik’s political secretary, Misra, leaving the fourth seat up for contest, as no single party commands the 30 first-preference votes required to claim it outright.
Congress holds 14 MLAs; the CPI(M), one. Together with the BJD’s surplus votes after electing Dr Misra, only a combined opposition effort could deny the BJP a sweep. Congress had initially offered the BJD two choices: back a Congress nominee, or field a candidate of its own that Congress would support. The BJD chose the latter and, crucially, nominated a candidate that Congress itself had first floated.
Political analysts said the unlikely alliance of the BJD and Congress against the BJP is likely to reshape the state’s once-familiar three-cornered political rivalry.
“Since its inception in 1997, the BJD built its political identity around a strong anti-Congress position. For nearly a quarter century in power, the party maintained distance from both national parties, occasionally extending tactical support to the BJP at the Centre while positioning itself as a regional alternative to Congress. That arrangement is now being quietly dismantled in RS polls,” senior political analyst Rabi Das said.
Das said for Naveen Patnaik, the stakes of this election are quite high as the party has been navigating defections, low morale, and uncomfortable questions about its future ever since the BJD lost the Assembly polls in 2024. “A victory for Dr Hota would be read as proof that Patnaik still commands enough political gravity to build and anchor coalitions. A defeat would do the opposite,” he added.
Political analyst Satya Prakash Dash said, beyond the numbers, the emerging contest reflects a deeper shift in Odisha’s political landscape. “For years, the state’s politics revolved around a dominant BJD, a growing BJP, and a weakened Congress struggling for relevance. The decision by the BJD and Congress to rally behind a consensus candidate signals that this familiar triangular contest may be giving way to a more fluid alignment. The March 16 vote will therefore serve as an early test of whether a new opposition equation can take shape in Odisha and whether the BJD, long accustomed to governing, can reinvent itself as the nucleus of a united challenge to the BJP,” he said.
