Indus Valley Times

Both parties forsake 15 years of animosity, redeem old alliance

By Nalini Sahu

Bhubaneswar, March 7: Forsaking their years of political animosity, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Odisha’s ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) on Wednesday dropped hints about both of them trying to redeeming their old alliance after 15 years of separation.

In Bhubaneswar, as many as 18 BJD leaders met over a meeting convened by party president and chief minister Naveen Patnaik at his residence in the evening. In Delhi, senior BJP leaders under the chairmanship of party president JP Nadda huddled up to decide the shape of the coalition.

“Odisha has achieved significant progress under CM Naveen Patnaik’s regime. We want to take the state to the next level of development. In this context, the BJD will take the steps that are best in the interest of the state,” senior BJD leader Debi Prasad Mishra told reporters after emerging from the meeting.

In Delhi, senior BJP leader and Sundergarh MP Jual Oram said, “There was threadbare discussion on our position in Odisha’s 21 Lok Sabha and 147 assembly seats. Deliberations were also held on seat-sharing with the BJD. However, on behalf of the Odisha unit, we said that we were ready to fight in all the Lok Sabha and Assembly seats. However, since BJP is a national party, we are leaving to the decision of our central leadership.”

This is not the first time the two parties entered into an alliance. They had forged the alliance on the eve of 1998 Lok Sabha elections. Of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state, the BJD and BP contested from 12 and 8 seats, respectively. They also fought 2000 and 2004 assembly elections together and ran a coalition government till 2009.

In 2009, BJD president and CM Naveen Patnaik shunted BJP out of the 11-year-old alliance after dubbing it as “communal.”