Bhubaneswar, April 27: The BJP, which set its ‘Mission Odisha’ aspiration five years ago, appears to be hell-bent this time to emerge victorious, leaving no room for the BJD to defend itself. The party, as it appears, believes that if it misses the train this time, it will be risking the chance of being pushed to political oblivion for years.
Having won eight of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 with a vote share of 38 per cent, the saffron party now sees an opportunity to increase its tally, especially by riding high on the Narendra Modi wave. Equally, it does not want to squander the present opportunity to form a government in the state Odisha on its own strength, to bring an end to the 24 years of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) rule.
The party has lined up a battery of top leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, party president JP Nadda, defence minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh Chief MinisterYogi Adityanath to campaign in the state.
Amit Shah, who addressed a massive public rally in Sonepur in Western Odisha on Thursday, is likely to visit the state again early next month.
BJP national president JP Nadda will visit Odisha on Sunday and address a public rally at Berhampur in Ganjam district to add more firepower to the campaign. This time, South Odisha, including CM Naveen Patnaik’s home district Ganjam, is on the radar of the saffron party where Pradeep Panigrahi is giving harrowing times to the BJD. It needs to be seen how Nadda tries to connect with the voters of the region which have traditionally voted for the BJD.
After the event in Berhampur, Nadda will attend a meeting of party leaders in Nabarangpur which was once a BJP bastion but slipped to the BJD in recent years.
Both Berhampur and Nabarangpur Lok Sabha seats are poised for an interesting fight in the upcoming polls. BJP has nominated Gopalpur MLA Pradeep Panigrahi, an ex-BJD leader, for Berhampur constituency while the BJD has fielded former BJP leader Bhrugu Baxipatra.
In Nabarangpur, the BJD has nominated Pradeep Majhi, who had won the 2009 polls from the constituency on a Congress ticket. Similarly, the BJP had fielded Balabhadra Majhi, who had defeated Pradeep Majhi in the constituency in 2014 elections as BJD nominee.
BJP state headquarters sources said the party is in the process of negotiation with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office for suitable dates for his campaigning in Odisha.
The PM, just before the election schedule was announced, had addressed two public rallies in Odisha – one at Sambalpur and the other at Chandikhole in Jajpur district.
Though the saffron party has been trying to grab power in the state since 2009 when it was ejected by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik from an 11-year-old alliance with the BJD, it has not succeeded as yet, largely because it failed to make a dent into the regional party’s women vote bank. Nearly, 70 lakh women who are the state government’s Mission Shakti programme’s members, are standing rock solid behind the BJD in every electoral hustings. Besides, old-age, widow and physically-challenged pensions as well as ration-card holders also form a sizable chunk of the BJD’s vote bank.
Naveen Patnaik, who became the CM of Odisha for the first time in 2000, has won five successive assembly polls.
In the 2019 general elections, the BJP won 8 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats and succeeded in pocketing 23 of the 147 assembly seats.
Amit Shah, who was then the BJP national president, had set a target of 120-plus assembly seats. However, as political analysts put it, Shah’s target fell flat as the party state unit lacked cadre strength at the grassroots.
