Odisha: Beleaguered BJP looks to Union home minister Amit Shah’s March 26 visit for resurrection
In 147-member State Assembly, BJP has only 23 members; it won 8 of 21 Lok Sabha seats in 2019
The saffron party, which was very often criticised for fostering a soft stand against the ruling BJD to get its support in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for passage of certain crucial bills, seems to have of late changed its stance and taken on the latter with all aggressiveness.
By Prasanna Mohanty
BHUBANESWAR, MARCH 7: Struggling since 2009 to form a government in Odisha on its own strength, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) provincial unit here is now looking to the guidance of party’s senior leader and Union home minister Amit Shah for a resurrection.
Mr Shah is likely to arrive in Odisha on March 26 on a two-day visit to the state.
During his visit, the home minister will spend a day at Bhadrak Lok Sabha constituency as a part of the BJP’s ‘Parliament constituency pravash’ programme.
According to Odisha BJP state general secretary Prithviraj Harichandan, the home minister is most likely to address public rallies during his visit and hold discussions with state leaders and grassroots-level workers. Besides, he will review all the preparatory works and fine-tune strategies for the 2024 Lok Sabha and assembly polls.
Ever since it was thrown out of an 11-year-old alliance by the BJD president and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in 2009, the BJP has desperately been trying to avenge the humiliation, but to no avail. The saffron party has not been able to make any substantial dent into the BJD vote banks.
In 2000, the BJP had won 38 seats of the 64 it had contested in alliance with the BJD. In 2019, it won 23 of the 147 seats contested from, as against a 120-plus target set by home minister Amit Shah.
In 2019, the BJP managed to win 8 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in Odisha.
What has worried the BJP’s central leaders is that in the 2022 rural and urban local body polls the party performance was far below their expectations. The party won only 42 of 854 Zilla Parishad (ZP) seats with a meager strike rate (SR) of 4.91per cent. The party’s vote share stood at 30.07 per cent, 2.42 per cent less than its 2019 vote share in assembly elections. In the municipal polls, the party won 16 of the 108 municipal chairman posts as against 76 bagged by the BJD.
The saffron party has appointed D. Purandeswari as its Odisha in-charge to strengthen its organizational base. Similarly, BJP general secretary Sunil Bansal, the man who is credited for the party’s Uttar Pradesh victory in 2022, has been appointed as Odisha observer to galvanise the organisation rebuilding process.
Both Ms Purandeswari and Mr Bansal have been regularly visiting every nook and corner of the state to raise and fortify the organisational structures to give a good fight to the BJD.
The saffron party, which was very often criticised for fostering a soft stand against the ruling BJD to get its support in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for passage of certain crucial bills, seems to have of late changed its stance and taken on the latter with all aggressiveness.
Twenty of the BJP’s state leaders, including its youth wing president Irarish Acharya, were on February 28 arrested during a recent demonstration against the ruling BJD over alleged deterioration of law and order in the state.
The BJP’s change of stance is also well-reflected on its insistence to seek resignation of the CM Naveen Patnaik in view of the brutal murder of state health minister Naba Kishore Das.
