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It is the strongest attack on Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik yet by a top national leader. At a time when he is being wooed by all sides of the political spectrum, Congress President Rahul Gandhi launched into the most scathing attack against the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) supremo in his own den on Friday.
The contrast with the way Prime Minister Narendra Modi treated Naveen during his three back-to-back visits to Odisha in December and January could not have been starker.
More importantly, he raked up what has only been talked about in hushed tones so far: the alleged secret understanding between Modi and Naveen.
Describing Naveen as the “junior partner” of Modi, the Congress president said the Odisha chief minister is being “remote controlled” by the PM, because of the involvement of his government in a series of corruption scandals.
Speaking at a Town Hall programme in the city, the Gandhi scion had said there was no difference between Modi and Naveen. Both of them are highly autocratic and run highly centralised governments for the benefit of the party and a handful of businessmen with no concern at all about the man on the street.
He levelled the additional charge of excessive dependence on bureaucrats against Naveen.
Rahul’s no-holds-barred attack on Naveen Patnaik brought into sharp focus the crisis of credibility that the BJP is suffering in Odisha because of the reluctance of its top leadership to take on the Odisha CM, even as its state leaders go hammer and tongs against him day in and day out.
The kid glove treatment has been particularly visible since the debacle the party suffered in its three strongholds of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in December.
Naveen, after all, has been the strongest and most dependable non-NDA ally of the Modi government in the current Lok Sabha, supporting and bailing it out whenever it has been in real or potential trouble.
The BJP is clearly looking to continue with this cozy relationship after the election, if not revive its alliance with the BJD that Naveen had terminated unilaterally in 2009.
Though Gita promptly declined the award saying it might be “misconstrued” at a time when the general elections are looming, the damage had already been done by then.
Things have come full circle for the Congress, which was accused of following the same ‘enemies in Bhubaneswar, friends in Delhi’ policy that the BJP is pursuing now throughout the 10-year long UPA rule from 2004 to 2014.
In his very first address to the party workers after being appointed PCC President in place of Niranjan Patnaik (the current incumbent) in 2013, Jayadev Jena had alleged that Naveen had conspired to have him removed from the same post in his earlier stint in 2008, proving that Naveen’s ‘deal’ with the Congress high command was not a figment of someone’s wild imagination.
The figures speak for themselves. From 38 seats in the Assembly in 2004, the Congress was reduced to 27 in 2009 and went further down to 16 in 2014 with a corresponding fall in its vote share.
The BJP gained at the Congress’ expense, most notably in the panchayat elections in February, 2017 in which the former won 297 zilla parishad seats to the Congress’ 60.
He thinks his party would gain electorally by occupying the entire opposition space in the state.
The recalibrated strategy was also evident in the public endorsement of PCC chief Niranjan Patnaik. Both at the Town Hall event and at the public meeting, Rahul, while admitting that factionalism had cost the party dearly in the past, said under Niranjan, the party was working as a team ‘for the first time’ in recent times.
This was only a public enunciation of the new strategy that had been evident earlier too when senior leader and former Union minister Srikant Jena was expelled from the party without so much as a show cause notice for his non-stop tirade against Niranjan.
It was the clearest possible signal that the Congress would not tolerate dissidence and indiscipline any longer.
While it may be tough to dislodge Naveen despite his failure on many fronts and anti-incumbency of 19 years, the Congress has certainly given itself the best possible chance of improving its position – and may be even give the BJD a run for its money – by taking him head on, especially with the BJP now a suspect in the public eye.
(The writer is a senior Bhubaneswar-based journalist and has reported for the BBC for the last twenty years. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own.The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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Published: 26 Jan 2019,04:35 PM IST