New Delhi: Five years after he entered the Rajya Sabha from Odisha, with the state’s ruling Biju Janata (Dal) supporting his candidature in a bypoll, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw is set to reprise the route, once again with the party’s backing.
In a statement Wednesday, the BJD — led by India’s second longest-serving Chief Minister, Naveen Patnaik — announced its support for Vaishnaw, who was posted in Odisha as a young IAS officer.
Vaishnaw’s portfolios are railways, communications, and electronics and information technology, and the BJD said in its statement that it is supporting him in the “larger interest of the state’s railways and telecom development”.
Soon after the BJP announced his candidature Wednesday, Vaishnaw said, “I am a disciplined worker of the BJP. I want to express my gratitude and thank the party leadership and PM Modi for giving me an opportunity to serve once again.”
The BJD’s decision, not entirely unexpected, comes against the backdrop of a growing impression that the BJP, despite being Odisha’s principal Opposition party, is in no rush to step up the heat on Patnaik, 77, who assumed office in March 2000, when the two parties were in an alliance.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was visiting Odisha to inaugurate the Sambalpur campus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), called Patnaik, who was sharing the dais, his “friend”. Patnaik reciprocated, crediting the PM for setting a “new direction for India”, putting the country on the path to become an economic powerhouse. A few months ago, Patnaik had rated Modi’s performance as PM 8/10.
At a public rally organised by the BJP later in the day, Modi attacked the Congress, accusing it of ignoring the interests of Odisha during its stints at the Centre. The BJD did not figure in the PM’s speech even once though, as opposed to 2019, when he had targeted Patnaik in the lead-up to the Lok Sabha and state elections, which take place simultaneously.
The BJP’s change in tack also found reflection in the words of Union Home Minister Amit Shah last August, when he described Patnaik as a “popular CM”, praising his role in handling natural calamities and the Maoist conflict. Just four years ago, he had called the BJD supremo a “burnt-out transformer”.
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‘Anti-Congressism’
While the BJD maintains that it is “politically equidistant” from the BJP and the Congress, in recent years, it has time and again helped the BJP, which lacks a majority in the Rajya Sabha, push through crucial legislations in Parliament.
These include the Citizenship Amendment Act, and legislations dealing with Delhi services, triple talaq, and scrapping Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. It also opposed the no-confidence motion moved against the Modi government last year.
In August, during a Lok Sabha debate on the no-confidence motion moved by the Congress, BJD MP Pinaki Misra defended the party’s move to oppose it, saying the very foundation of the Patnaik-led party is “anti-Congressism”.
“We were born on 25th of December 1997 on the basis of opposing the Congress party’s corrupt rule in Odisha at that point of time… Any motion brought by the Congress party, goes without saying, is out of question for the BJD to support,” Misra had said.
The BJD had exited the NDA in 2009, ahead of the Lok Sabha and Odisha assembly election, in the aftermath of the 2008 Kandhamal anti-Christian riots.
Patnaik, however, maintained cordial ties with the BJP’s central leadership, even after the prime minister’s post was taken over by Narendra Modi, once described by the former as a “controversial” leader due to the “communal shadow” hanging over him.
Over the last 10 years, even as the BJP has made aggressive forays in states governed by the Congress and other parties not aligned with the NDA, the BJD has remained largely immune from action led by investigative agencies such as the ED and CBI, which the Opposition says are playing a partisan role under the Modi government.
The BJP’s state unit, however, still rails against the BJD, which was founded as a splinter group of the Janata Dal by Patnaik in 1997 after the demise of his father, former Odisha CM Biju Patnaik. But the perception that the two parties have reached an “understanding” has taken the sting out of such attacks.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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