Indus Valley Times

By Nalini Sahu

Bhubaneswar, March 6: Odisha state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has been literally struggling since 2009 to form a government of its own in the state, is now pinning high hope on the forthcoming visit of party’s senior leader and Union home minister Amit Shah for a turnaround in its fortune.

Mr Shah is likely to arrive in Odisha on March 26 on a two-day visit to the state. 

The home minister, during his short-stay, will spend a day in Bhadrak Lok Sabha constituency as a part of the BJP’s ‘Parliament constituency pravash’ programme.

BJP state general secretary Prithviraj Harichandan said 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.

“We have got information about the tentative programmes of Amit Shah ji. He will go to Bhadrak as part of the BJP’s ‘Parliament constituency pravash’ where he is expected to address public rallies and meet party leaders as well as workers. We’ll soon get the concrete information about his itinerary and let you know,” said Mr Harichandan.

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 parliamentary and assembly constituencies in the state to raise and fortify the organisational structures to give a good fight to the BJD.