BJD eyes an opportunity in federal politics

A long stint at the helm and an inability to fully decouple from BJP's politics has left BJD unable to perfect an oppositional pitch in its voice

Naveen Patnaik’s election as the president of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) for the ninth time offers a reading of the problems nagging the party for some time now. That Patnaik, at 78, remains the party’s choice for leadership underlines the failure to let the second rung of leadership evolve. The attempt to position bureaucrat-turned-politician VK Pandian as Patnaik’s successor was shelved after the BJP ran a successful campaign targeting Pandian’s Tamil origins.

That Patnaik, at 78, remains the party’s choice for leadership underlines the failure to let the second rung of leadership evolve (PTI)

The challenges before the BJD are many. It was the party of office in Odisha from 2000 to 2024. Despite its protestations of being equidistant from the Congress and the BJP, the BJD had little hesitation in playing ball with the BJP, having once been part of the NDA. The party’s action in Parliament over the Waqf Bill, where it reversed its stand from opposing the Bill to allowing its MPs to vote as per their beliefs, was a palimpsest of this BJD-BJP tango. A long stint at the helm and an inability to fully decouple from the politics that BJP also endorses, has left BJD unable to perfect an oppositional pitch in its voice. This is compounded by the fact that, having splintered from the Janata Dal, the party has anti-Congressism in its DNA, which will be a hindrance in making common cause with the Congress -- the principal oppositional force in the state for most of the past two and a half decades.

The BJD will need to recast its strategy to reassert itself in Odisha. It will need to look beyond welfare politics and occupy ideological mindspace within the polity. Patnaik’s call to fight for “Odisha’s rights” as against BJP’s Odia asmita (pride in self) suggests a subtle shift that privileges federal principles (perhaps taking a cue from Tamil Nadu) to confront a dominating Centre.