With A Weakening BJD, Can Rout Form A New Party To Ally With BJP In 2019?

The situation is tailor-made for a new regional party in Odisha. After four successive terms in office, the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) is not quite the invincible force it was in 2014. Several founding members of the BJD, who have either been shown the door by the ruling party supremo Naveen Patnaik or have left on their own, are without a party or sulking in other parties.

Many other BJD leaders, including sitting MLAs, apprehend that they might not get the party ticket this time and are watching the developments keenly, waiting for the right time to jump ship. On its part, the BJP, keen to reclaim the political space it had in the state before parting with the BJD in 2009, is ready to do an encore of what it did in 1997: play midwife to the birth of a new party carved out of an existing one and fight the election in alliance with it.

If the idea of a new party hasn’t taken off despite such favourable circumstances, the blame should be put squarely on senior leader Dr. Damodar Rout who was expelled by Naveen for ‘anti-party’ activities by Naveen last month. The voluble leader, who has always followed the dictum “Speak first, Think later”, appears to have queered the pitch for the new party by jumping the gun and speaking out of turn at a time when the situation calls for caution, discretion and secrecy.

Last week, he told the media that former Lok Sabha MP Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda was on board along with veteran leaders like Prafulla Ghadai and Bijoy Mohapatra. Ghadai, a former finance minister, was expelled by Naveen in 2014. Mohapatra has been a one-man army since being tricked out of the 2000 assembly elections at the last minute by Naveen.

The rebuttal came fast. While Mohapatra hasn’t responded yet, Panda and Ghadai were quick to repudiate Dr. Rout’s claim. Panda said he was yet to decide on his future course and would announce it himself if and when he decides to form or join a party. Ghadai flatly denied that there had been any contact with Dr. Rout or anyone on his behalf about the formation of a new party. He said he was ‘pained’ by the ‘false’ claim made by his long-standing colleague.

So, is the party all over? Not quite, if sources close to the leaders keen about a new party are to be believed. Bijoy Mohapatra and former Union minister Dillip Ray, both sidelined and sulking in the BJP, have still not given up hope while former Union minister Braja Kishore Tripathy and former Odisha finance minister Panchanan Kanungo are very much in the thick of things. Informal discussions are on and a clear picture may emerge by the end of this month, as per sources.

Notwithstanding its rhetoric of ‘Mission 120’ (winning 120 out of the 147 Assembly seats in the state), the BJP knows it is not in a position to take on the BJD on its own. The Congress party under new PCC chief Niranjan Patnaik is reviving. An alliance with a new party comprising many former BJD leaders, who were close associates of the late Biju Patnaik, thus looks the saffron party’s best bet. The idea is to project the new party as the true inheritor of the Biju legacy.

But with elections due in the next few months, time may be running out for the formation of the new party.