Lok Sabha election 2019: Suave, articulate Baijayant Panda can give BJD a run for its money - Hindustan Times
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Lok Sabha election 2019: Suave, articulate Baijayant Panda can give BJD a run for its money

Hindustan Times, Bhubaneswar | ByDebabrata Mohanty
Mar 22, 2019 07:26 PM IST

A graduate from the Michigan Technological University in the United States, Baijayant Panda belongs to the first generation of entrepreneurs in Odisha once more known for mind-numbing deprivation and lack of entrepreneurial skills.

Baijayant Panda, perhaps the second-most known Odia in Delhi after Naveen Patnaik, will be the most-watched candidate in Odisha as he will contest from Kendrapara constituency on a BJP ticket in the Lok Sabha election 2019.

Baijayant Panda was forced out of the ruling BJD following growing differences with chief minister Naveen Patnaik but sprang a surprise early this month when he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.(Arabinda Mahapatra)
Baijayant Panda was forced out of the ruling BJD following growing differences with chief minister Naveen Patnaik but sprang a surprise early this month when he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.(Arabinda Mahapatra)

The four-time BJD lawmaker was forced out of the ruling party last year following growing differences with chief minister Naveen Patnaik but sprang a surprise early this month when he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.

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Quick to capitalise on his popularity in coastal Odisha, Modi-Shah duo made him the BJP’s national vice-president at par with other senior party leaders like Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje Scindia. The BJP hopes the 55-year-old helicopter pilot-turned-politician would add the much-needed strength to the party’s challenge against deeply entrenched Biju Janata Dal thanks to his connection with the youth and a suave personality.

A graduate from the Michigan Technological University in the United States, Baijayant Panda belongs to the first generation of entrepreneurs in Odisha once more known for mind-numbing deprivation and lack of entrepreneurial skills. His father Bansidhar Panda was a highly-respected industrialist, who started a ferroalloys industries in the southern Odisha district of Rayagada in the 1960s at the insistence of his close friend and former chief minister Biju Patnaik.

Thereafter, the friendship between the Patnaiks and Pandas flourished with Baijayant Panda’s mother Ila Panda becoming the Rajya Sabha MP from the erstwhile Janata Dal between 1992 and 1998. The family friendship carried on till the next generation with Naveen Patnaik sending Baijayant Panda to the Rajya Sabha twice between 2000 and 2009. In 2009, Panda chose to resign from the Rajya Sabha to successfully contest from Kendrapara Lok Sabha constituency which he won again in 2014.

Long regarded as an articulate voice of the BJD in television studios in Delhi, Baijayant Panda became the bete noire for Naveen Patnaik after the 2014 polls as a perception grew that the Kendrapara MP was more of a Modi man. Baijayant Panda’s numerous newspaper articles and TV debates extolling several policies of Modi including demonetisation did not go down well with Patnaik.

So bitter was the fallout that last year that when Bansidhar Panda died at the age of 87, Naveen Patnaik did not visit his house to pay his last respects. Baijayant Panda was at the receiving end when the state police seized one of his choppers and summoned him over allegations that he flew over the “eco-sensitive” Chilika lake with two Delhi-based journalists in September last year.

Apart from his suave image, Panda’s biggest asset is the 21-year-old Odia TV channel that his wife Jagi Mangat owns and is likely to challenge the political narrative set by several pro-government TV channels and newspapers in the run-up to the elections. OTV owned by Jagi Mangat has perhaps more TRPs than all of the Odia TV news channels put together.

Baijayant Panda would play a key role in highlighting the failures of the BJD government through hundreds of meeting which he can easily attend using his choppers. A resourceful politician, Panda’s choppers would come in handy for the BJP leaders during the election campaign.

Kendrapara is the plumbing capital of Odisha, perhaps even of all India, as the plumbers deftly fixing the leaky taps and pipes in metros invariably hail from the coastal Odisha district. But it’s also the political capital of Odisha that has long been the bastion of anti-Congress politics in the state.

After Independence, the Congress won the seat just once when its veteran leader Nityananda Kanungo won the Kendrapara seat in 1952. Later, Kendrapara became a bastion for anti-Congress parties as Socialist leader Surendranath Dwibedy won four times consecutively from the Lok Sabha constituency on a Praja Socialist Party ticket.

Former chief minister Biju Patnaik won three times from Kendrapara by contesting as a Janata Party candidate twice and once as the Bharatiya Lok Dal candidate. Since 1952, many prominent Congress leaders of Odisha like late Basant Biswal, Bhagabat Mohanty, Surendra Mohanty, Batakrushna Nayak, Srikant Jena and Archana Nayak have been defeated from Kendrapara as Congress candidates.

With huge resources at his disposal, the BJP’s national vice-president would surely mount an aggressive campaign against the yet to be decided BJD candidate from Kendrapara. Between 2009 and 2019, Panda has done well to be in touch with his electorate, standing them during their hour of distress while taking care to publicise his benevolence through Facebook posts.

If Panda wins, it would mean a personal defeat of Patnaik and may lead to interesting equations in Odisha politics.

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