Has Naveen Patnaik Committed ‘Ideological Betrayal’ in Past 24 Years?

There’s a big question mark over whether some acts of Odisha’s former Chief Minister, Naveen Patnaik, even after losing the 2024 elections to the Bharatiya  Janata Party(BJP) , can be construed as an ‘ideological betrayal’, because of which his is still not able to wriggle out of the sticky situation created by Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

When the entire Opposition in the country or INDIA bloc had come out on the streets with vehemence for various issues, such as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, the alleged manipulation in voters’ lists and so on, Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal (BJD) appeared clinically detached. This was despite Patnaik’s statements a few months ago that his party would maintain a “stern posture” with regard to its former ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), come-what-may.

“That was a smokescreen behind which he (Patnaik) is tacitly doing everything that keeps Narendra Modi in good humour. This is evident from some of his very recent actions,” said Rabi Das, a political analyst.

Patnaik’s “mental subservience” to BJP in general and Modi in particular, could not have been more pronounced than what he did since he began his political innings in Odisha in 2000, he noted.

Contrary to his legendary father Biju Patnaik’s ideology of keeping miles away from any political party with communal stains, Naveen Patnaik’s silent bonhomie with Modi remains a mystery?  

However, the BJD supremo broke his party’s alliance with the BJP after a communal conflagration in Kandhamal district in Odisha, which was allegedly fuelled by the saffron elements in 2008. Over 17 people were killed in the communal violence.

For a while, Patnaik earned a kind of distinction when he claimed that he could never have a truck with any party that had a communal tilt in its political ideology. So, a nine-year- old alliance got buried in the footnotes of the state’s politics.

Patnaik’s stance for secular politics buoyed him through the polls in 2014 and 2019 successfully, despite a nationwide wave in favour of Narendra Modi in 2019. 

But what has kept many political watchers guessing is Naveen’s continued and unstated support for BJP in Parliament on various consequential issues at a time when BJP most needed BJD’s support in both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha.

It may be recalled that in the election campaign in 2019, Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah had gone acerbic during his public meetings, declaring that “BJD would be uprooted from its citadel and thrown into the Bay of Bengal”. Although those barbs hardly had any impact on voters of the state when Patnaik, with his enviable cool, kick-started his unique bus-ride campaign, making his smile and ‘namaskar’ the unique selling point and dealing a lethal blow to BJP’s dream to unseat him. In fact, the latter came back with an absolute majority in the Assembly of 114 seats and eight seats in the Lok Sabha.

Yet, for reasons not known, Patnaik kept supporting the Modi-led government at the Centre on several crucial issues that left people from within the BJD in a state of abandonment, which still continues.

However, the turning point came in the 2024 elections when Modi went all out to deal a severe blow to Patnaik with his sharp attacks during several poll-related visits to Odisha. And all this happened when Patnaik was battling health issues and had left everything in the hands of bureaucrat-turned-BJD ‘neta’ V K Pandian.

“This is being described as an ‘ideological betrayal’ because after the break-up of BJD’s alliance with BJP, Naveen had mentioned many times that he would maintain a safe distance from BJP and Congress,” said Das.

This has brewed some kind of discontent among Patnaik’s followers and the people in general who have consecutively voted BJD to power since 2000.

Are Modi and Patnaik two sides of the same coin? Inseparable despite all odds, even after losing the 2024 election BJP after an uninterrupted BJD rule of 24 years?

“What appear’s like a Damocle’s Sword over Patnaik are a few issues like the Ponzi and mining scams in Odisha in which the BJD allegedly had its feet in smear”, said Kameswar Rao, a senior journalist.

As on date, Patnaik seems to have swallowed all humiliation directed at him by BJP during poll campaigns, more so, even Prime Minister Modi taking personal jibes at Patnaik’s failing health and ‘outsourcing’ everything to Pandian, who was then “masquerading as a proxy” for the top most man in the state.

After losing the 2024 elections, Naveen Patnaik, on a few occasions, had said that BJD would not spare BJP on any issue related to peoples’ welfare, either in Odisha or in the country.

But the BJD leader surprised the Opposition in Odisha and in India as a whole, allowing some of his Rajya Sabha (RS) members to vote in favour of the Waqf Bill, although a lone BJD member, Munna Khan, opposed the Bill tooth and nail.

Asked why his RS members supported the Waqf Bill, Patnaik is quoted to have said that he had issued no whip and told his RS members to follow their ‘conscience’.   

However, all that has turned to be a façade several times when other crucial issues came up in Parliament.

The most recent being the debate on ‘Operation Sindoor’ in Rajya Sabha when four BJD members stridently rained accolades on its success but were  carefully non-committal on the government’s failure in handling security lapses, and not able to find any clue of the killer terrorists in Pahalgam, as well as on the ceasefire issue, let alone even a mention of Donald Trump’s umpteen tweets on ceasefire mediation etc.

The four Rajya Sabha members who stood behind Modi’s stance were Sasmit Patra, Sulata Deo, Manas Mangaraj and Subhasish Khuntia.

 “Be it in the RS or in the Lok Sabha, BJD’s unequivocal support for NDA remains intact. Nobody knows about the any pressing compulsions regardless of the offending statements by Congress on Naveen’s “mental subjugation” to Modi right from 2000 to this datw,” noted Das.

If the BJD MPs’ stance on the Wakf Bill was a call of their ‘conscience’, as stated by Patnaik, then what was the compulsion to go overboard to support the NDA on Operation Sindoor? If I was not an issue of conscience then, perhaps, it was a bid to flatter PM Modi. Which would not have been possible without Patnaik’s diktat, he added.

Rebellion Stoked         

“What cannot be lost sight of is that over the Operation Sindoor debate, two BJD Rajya Sabha MPs -- Debasish Samantray and Munna Khan -- virtually dared the BJD supremo stating that they could not support the Operation Sindoor exercise during the debate, which appeared as if there was a stroke of rebellion within the rank and file of the BJD” noted senior journalist Rao, based in Bhubaneswar.    

As a result, the above duo was asked to abstain from the debate in the Upper House by the leadership.

So far, the BJD has also not taken any position on the election on September 9 of the Vice President of India, following the resignation of Jagdeep Dhankar. However, political grapevine within BJD suggests that Patnaik may ask his Rajya Sabha members to support the BJP-led NDA candidate.   

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Odisha, with over 40 years’ experience in the profession. The views are personal.