Mandate 2024 | Will Naveen make or be history? (2024)

Sunset has turned the sky a flaming red, in step with the crimson of the blooming Gulmohar trees that line the route of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s roadshow in the heart of state capital Bhubaneswar on May 20. A gentle breeze brings relief from the humid heat for the mass of supporters that throng either side. Women in elegant Sambalpuris, the intricately-woven handloom saris native to the state, wave green BJD (Biju Janata Dal) flags, the white conch shell symbol of the party shimmering in the centre. Some are even sporting cardboard face masks of his. Three rows of dhol players drum up a percussion storm as women in tribal attire perform the Dalkhai, the popular rhythmic folk dance of harvest season.

The drumbeats of history are indeed beating loud and clear for Naveen. By setting out on these packed roadshows, Odisha’s five-time chief minister is hoping to reap another rich harvest of votes and break all electoral records with a sixth consecutive term for the BJD and himself. Elections to the state’s 147 legislative assembly seats are being held simultaneously with that for its 21 Lok Sabha seats. If Naveen wins and becomes chief minister again, he will be in pole position to overtake Pawan Chamling’s record as the longest-serving chief minister in the country’s legislative history. Chamling was Sikkim CM for 24 years and 165 days. On June 4, when the results will be announced, Naveen would have completed 24 years and 91 days, short by a mere 74 days to claim the top honours. But should he fail to secure a majority in the state polls, he will be history as, at age 77, this will probably be the last election he will contest.

More than a show of force, these rallies are a show of face for Naveen. Especially after leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), his main rival in the state, have spread vile rumours about him being seriously ill, suffering from dementia perhaps and becoming a puppet in the hands of a clique of Tamil-speaking IAS officers who are actually running the show. Much of that criticism is directed at V. Karthikeya Pandian, his former private secretary, who resigned from the IAS in October 2023 and was appointed chairman of the state’s powerful 5T programme, his cabinet minister status giving him the authority to oversee all the key state government departments. Pandian, who subsequen­tly joined the BJD and is now the party’s star campaigner, is accused of being de facto chief minister and projected to be Naveen’s successor. Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, contesting from the Sambalpur Lok Sabha constituency and a potential CM candidate, minced no words when he asked, “Where is Naveen Patnaik? He is seen only in videos and is absent in the field. Neither the ministers nor the secretaries can meet him. There is simmering resentment against him in his party as he is in the grip of a cartel.”

BJP’s GAME PLAN

The BJP has also made restoring Odia “asmita” (pride) its primary election plank and pledged to stop “outsiders” like Pandian, who is of Tamil origin, from ruling the state. Having made deep inroads into the state, the party has overtaken the Congress as the principal challenger to the BJD. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP increased its 2014 tally of one seat to eight, securing 38.4 per cent of the votes, while the BJD won 12 seats and netted 42.8 per cent of the votes. That streak did not extend to the assembly polls, though, where Naveen won with a landslide, as he did in 2014. The BJD won 112 of the 147 seats in the 2019 assembly polls, 38 more than the 74 seats it needed for a simple majority. It also managed to increase its vote share by 1.3 percentage points to 44.7 per cent, but saw a five-seat erosion on its 2014 tally. The BJP vote share in the 2019 assembly election, on the other hand, grew by 14.5 percentage points to 32.5 per cent; the party also secured 23 seats, 13 more than in 2014, but still woefully short of the number it needs in order to bridge the wide chasm and fell the BJD.

In the current round of elections, the BJP is hoping not only to win more Lok Sabha seats in the state but also to decimate the BJD in the assembly polls and oust Naveen. In that endeavour, there is no insult the BJP is not hurling at the Odisha CM. Sambit Patra, the BJP candidate from Puri, after organising a successful roadshow for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the temple town, mocked Naveen while talking to INDIA TODAY, “Naveen Patnaik has become a demi-god, a deity who does not blink, does not speak and does not sleep. He watches stonily as pandas (pandits) like Pandian perform the rituals of running the state. By speaking less, he retains his mystique, and the people’s curses are directed towards the pandits rather than against him for non-performance. But we will ensure that it is game over for Naveen.”

PATRA’s FAUX PAS

Unfortunately for Patra, his overconfident streak would vanish the same afternoon, when he chose to describe Lord Jagannath as a “Modi bhakt” at a press conference. The BJD was quick to pounce on this blasphemy, with Naveen taking to X to say, “Calling Mahaprabhu a bhakt of another human being is an insult to the Lord. This has hurt the sentiments and demeaned the faith of crores of Jagannath bhakts and Odias across the world.” Forced to apologise, Patra said he would fast for three days in front of the temple to seek forgiveness of the divine. Rubbing salt in his wound, Pandian told a news agency, “In this heat and dust, he should take care of himself and not faint.”

Meanwhile, PM Modi, who once seemed to have cordial relations with Naveen, even praising him at a function a month earlier, surprised everyone when he lashed out at the CM at a campaign rally in Kandhamal district on May 11. “People of the state are unhappy with the CM because he cannot name the districts of the state and their capitals from a public platform without reading from a piece of paper,” he said. “Can you trust him with your children’s future?” A remark that came in for some ridicule since districts have headquarters, not capitals. At another rally the same day, alluding to Naveen’s alleged incapacity to rule and allowing Pandian to fill in the gap, the PM said, “In Odisha, there is a SuperCM who lords over a democratically elected CM and MLAs.” Naveen hit back in a video recording the same day, though not in response to Modi’s allegation. “Remembering Odisha only during elections will not help you. Do you remember the promises you had made in 2014 and 2019? The people of Odisha remember your promise to reduce the prices of LPG, petrol and diesel, to create two crore jobs, to provide mobile connectivity to all, to reduce and waive GST. You have forgotten all these unfulfilled promises, but people of the state have not forgotten any of these.” On May 29, at a rally in Baripada, the PM went to the extent of holding Pandian responsible for Naveen’s deteriorating health. The CM promptly held a press conference and refuted the PM’s allegations.

However, even as the BJP gets personal in its campaign, Naveen in his rallies prefers to focus on his track record of development, the numerous welfare schemes of his government and his vision and game plan to make Odisha the top-ranking state in the country should he win another term. The Bhubaneswar roadshow was typical of this style of campaigning. When his green election campaign bus bedecked with white conch shells arrived, it was greeted with a burst of crackers and a shower of confetti. The crowd cheered loudly when the hydraulic lift bearing Naveen glided to the top. Attired in his trademark white cotton kurta-pyjama, Naveen, his silver-grey hair slightly askew, waved vigorously to the crowd before picking up the microphone.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE

Shorn of oratorical flourish, he made a crisp and characteristically brief spe­ech, sticking to his key poll promises. Speaking in Odia, he asked his audience: “You will get free electricity from July, are you happy?” The crowd roared its approval. He then asked the same of the Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana (BSKY), as part of which Odia citizens get free treatment in the best private hospitals, and the cheers were even louder. The response was the same when he talked about KALIA (Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation), a package to help farmers and reduce poverty. But the loudest roar of affirmation came when he asked humbly, “Is Naveen Patnaik good?” The chief minister then asked the people to press the Jodi Sankha (twin conches) on the ballot machine for both the assembly and the Lok Sabha candidates.

Not only is Naveen avoiding criticism of his opponents, he is also refusing to play the caste and religion cards to seek votes. He goes by the belief that “When your works speaks for itself, let it.” His certainly does. When Naveen first took over as chief minister on March 5, 2000, all odds were against him succeeding. A Doon School alumnus who had Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of Indira Gandhi, as his classmate, Naveen was born and raised in privilege. His father was the legendary Biju Patnaik, the CM of Odisha, but Naveen was least interested in politics, absorbed instead in a jet-setting lifestyle, which included frequent travels abroad and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Mick Jagger. He wrote books on exotic plants and Indian history, ran a boutique in Delhi and embraced permanent bachelorhood. But forced to take over his father’s legacy after his death in 1997, Naveen founded the BJD and served for a brief while in the Vajpayee government as the Union minister for steel and mines. After his party, in alliance with the BJP, won a majority in the 2000 assembly election and defeated the Congress, Naveen took over as CM and turned his back forever on the good life in Delhi.

Back then, Odisha was considered one of India’s poorest and most backward states, infamous for its famines, cyclones and corruption. Naveen went about setting things right with a vengeance. Shunning opulence, he adopted a frugal lifestyle, dressing in a white cotton kurta-pyjama and staying in the outhouse of his father’s sprawling bungalow in Bhubaneswar. Though he couldn’t speak the language fluently (his critics say he still can’t), Naveen got down to cleaning “the Augean stables”, as he put it, coming down heavily on corruption and hard-focusing on development. With a keep-it-simple, no-nonsense, minimum speeches, maximum governance approach, he appointed competent bureaucrats to execute his vision and came down heavily on MLAs indulging in corruption. Shunning communal politics, he parted ways with the BJP in 2009, after the Kandhamal violence perpetrated by Sangh Parivar elements in the wake of Lakshmanananda Saraswati’s killing saw more than 39 Christians being killed and over 395 churches set aflame. His stand was vindicated when, in the 2009 assembly election, the BJD won 103 seats on its own—a two-thirds majority—and the BJP was left with only six seats.

Naveen has never looked back since, with the BJD continuing to notch massive majorities on its own in the 2014 and 2019 assembly polls. In this time, Naveen has built an enviable governance record. Poverty, according to official statistics, has come down from 63.8 per cent of the population in 2006 to 11.07 per cent now. The state government estimates that their schemes have pulled out 6.2 million people out of poverty in the past five years alone. Rice production has grown by over 50 times in the past two decades—from 0.1 million tonnes in 2004 to 5.4 million tonnes last year—making Odisha not only self-sufficient in foodgrains but also in a position to sell to other states. Its maternal and infant mortality rates have dropped significantly, and the state’s per capita income has trebled since 2012. It now stands at Rs 1.6 lakh per annum, higher than in other backward states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Jharkhand. GDP growth, too, was an impressive 7.8 per cent last year, higher than the national average of 7 per cent. In terms of fiscal management, Odisha’s debt to GDP ratio is 13.1 per cent, the lowest in the country, with a revenue surplus of Rs 43,471 crore and zero market borrowing (see A Progress Report). Much of the increase has come from the change in policy in 2019 to not only receive royalties but also auction its mineral wealth that has seen revenues grow five-fold and fund Naveen’s vast welfare programmes.

After his assembly election victory in 2019, Naveen came up with what he called 5T, which stood for Teamwork, Technology, Transparency and Time leading to Transformation, and chose Pandian, who was his private secretary then, to spearhead the effort. Shaken by the fact that the BJP had won eight of the state’s 21 Lok Sabha seats and that its vote share now posed a serious threat to the BJD, he shrewdly began keeping vote banks in mind while devising the newer development and welfare schemes.

WOOING VOTE BANKS

Much of his development efforts thus came to be directed towards youth and women even as he worked on reducing overall poverty. To cater to the youth, he focused on improving education and sports facilities. So, apart from opening 315 Odisha Adarsha Vidyalayas that would impart education in the English medium, more than 8,500 schools were upgraded, with digital blackboards in high schools, improved classroom infrastructure and libraries, and toilets across government schools. That makeover is evident in the 171-year-old Puri Zilla School, which has 1,700 students and has seen its classrooms upgraded in the past two years with digital blackboards and enhanced sports facilities. The last includes a full-fledged training centre for gymnasts, where we find 12-year-old Bhumika Reddy doing the hoops with ease and saying she aspires to be an Olympic star.

Making Odisha a sports hub of the country, particularly for hockey and training, is one of Naveen’s major accomplishments. The state now boasts of two world-class hockey stadiums in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela, which have come up in the past decade; Odisha has also hosted the Hockey World Cup twice in the past five years. Bhubaneswar’s Kalinga Stadium has been transformed into a national sports training centre of repute with state-of-the-art equipment, including advanced computers and software to improve sportspersons’ performance. “We realised that, to produce world champs, other countries employed science in a big way, using advanced computers to study an athlete’s performance and improve it,” says Vineel Krishna, sports secretary as well as special secretary to the CM, who has overseen the transformation. “So, we have had them installed and, apart from sportspersons from Odisha, we have athletes and players from across the country come and use our facilities.”

When it comes to the women in his state, Naveen has always been a champion at working towards their empowerment. In 2011, the state passed a law reserving 50 per cent of the seats for women in Panchayati Raj institutions. In 2018, he had the Odisha legislature pass a resolution reserving 33 per cent of the state’s 21 Lok Sabha candidacies for women and making sure his party implemented it both for the 2019 and the ongoing 2024 elections. Mission Shakti, which began soon after he took over as CM in 2000, has seen a series of schemes being launched for them. The state has also excelled in its efforts to boost women entrepreneurs through its Self Help Group (SHG) programme, disbursing Rs 40,000 crore worth of loans to 600,000 such groups in the past five years alone. Many of these women now earn incomes for their families and are emerging as leaders in their own right. At the spanking new state bus terminal in Bhubaneswar, Debjani Das and her co-workers run a bakery, making, among other things, millet laddoos. Debjani, who is married to a police trainer and has three young children, said she was reluctant to join the group at first as she didn’t know how to bake. But with the programme enabling her to go for training, she mastered the art and now earns Rs 10,000 a month, which she hopes to triple in the coming years.

With PM Modi gaining in popularity in Odisha and to counter the growing influence of the BJP, Naveen has also flanked central programmes with innovative state welfare schemes that strive to do one better. So, in the health sector, apart from revamping all tertiary and secondary care government hospitals, which includes providing them equipment and medicines, Naveen launched the BSKY in 2018. Unlike the Centre’s Ayushman Bharat scheme, which is based on insurance claims, under BSKY, each adult is given a card to avail of free treatment of up to Rs 5 lakh, with the state paying the amount directly to the hospital.

THE PANDIAN FACTOR

And if Modi and the BJP thought they could trumpet the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, Naveen has wooed the Hindutva vote in the state by revamping the parikrama (perimeter) around the famed Jagannath temple in Puri. In a major operation headed by Pandian, the 75-metre parikrama was first chalked out, the existing buildings and obstructions demolished, and the area transformed with comfortable walkways and beautiful gardens. Naveen inaugurated it just days before Modi performed the pran pratishtha ceremony at Ayodhya in January this year. The Odisha government’s efforts, says Pandian, have also been secular. Apart from renovating the Jagannath shrine, the state government has also worked to improve the conditions of 12,393 other temples, 1,160 churches and 660 mosques in the state.

However, while the Jagannath makeover may have burnished Naveen’s Hindu credentials, Modi’s construction of the Ram temple is likely to supersede it as the more significant achievement, providing greater traction for the BJP. The party has also raked up the controversy over the parikrama project, accusing it of uprooting several historical mutts that were integral to the temple, and blaming the BJD for disrespecting Hindu sentiment.

It doesn’t stop Pandian from using the Jagannath temple revamp to good effect. Besides playing videos of the makeover just before every election meeting, Pandian also starts every speech with a “Jai Jagannath”, always eliciting an enthusiastic response from the crowds. Indeed, Pandian’s poll meetings are carefully-choreographed affairs, with him touring the bulk of the assembly seats and Naveen handling most of the Lok Sabha election rallies. Pandian is careful to project Naveen’s work in all the meetings, describing himself as “a loyal soldier of the CM”. On a helicopter ride to an election rally in Chilika, Pandian had his office compile the details of all that the government has done for the constituency, including the money spent, the key issues and steps taken to sort them out, besides an updated poll on how the party is faring in that constituency. Before he arrives at a venue, songs in praise of Naveen are played and films showing his welfare schemes and development work screened. Pandian’s speeches are a bit longer than Naveen’s, but again highlight the major schemes of his government and the Nabin Odisha (new Odisha) mission the CM plans for his sixth term. It will include free electricity for 90 per cent of domestic households, a separate Rs 1 lakh crore budget for the youth for the next 10 years, a gender budget to enable women to be successful entrepreneurs and free loans of up to Rs 5 lakh for farmers as also free electricity. There is also a raft of schemes to improve the lot of tribals, who constitute 22 per cent of the state’s population.

Not only has Pandian’s star status set off murmurs within his own party, the 50-year-old has also become the favourite punching bag of the BJP. A fitness freak and a long-distance runner, Pandian has been Naveen’s close aide for over a decade now. He shot into the limelight when he thwarted a coup attempt by Pyarimohan Mohapatra, ironically another IAS officer-turned-politician and close to Naveen’s father Biju Patnaik. After Naveen was elected CM in 2000, Mohapatra became his political advisor and was made a Rajya Sabha member in 2004. But in May 2012, when Naveen was in London, he fomented a revolt against him in the BJD. Pandian, who had caught Naveen’s eye for his efficiency during his stint as collector in Ganjam, the home district of his constituency, blew the whistle, which led to Naveen cutting his trip short and sacking Mohapatra. Pandian’s wife Sujata Karthikeyan, who is an IAS officer herself and is from Odisha, was the driving force behind Mission Shakti before the Election Commission relieved her of the charge before campaigning began.

BJD-BJP PART WAYS

Pandian’s move centre stage has given the BJP the perfect handle to project Naveen as a weak and effete CM whose time is up. This, when the saffron was all set to tie up with the BJD for a seat-sharing arrangement just before the 2024 election schedule was announced. While the BJD was willing to concede more Lok Sabha seats to the BJP, talks broke down when the latter demanded a sizeable number of seats for the legislative assembly as well. Pradhan apparently was against any tie-up with the BJD as he believes the state BJP now has the strength to challenge and defeat Naveen. Many of Naveen’s schemes, he says, are performing poorly and most of the development is restricted to key urban centres such as Puri, Cuttack and Bhubaneswar to the neglect of the rural areas in the state. He also alleges that there is massive unemployment among youth and Odisha has become the epicentre of migration. That Naveen is contesting from two assembly seats this time—his traditional Hinjili seat in Ganjam district and the Kantabanji constituency in Bolangir district—is being painted by the BJP as a sign of his being unsure of winning this time.

Pandian, though, dismisses any talk of Naveen’s fading popularity or anti-incumbency. To illustrate his point, he cites the panchayat elections of March 2022, when the BJD captured all 30 districts, winning 765 of the 852 zilla parishad seats. Pandian is wisely contesting neither an assembly nor a parliamentary seat, which leaves him free to tour the state and blunt criticism about trying to succeed Naveen. Yet all is not well within the BJD either, with several of its prominent members defecting to the BJP in March 2024, including six-time Lok Sabha member and Cuttack MP Bhartruhari Mahtab and two-time MP Sidhant Mohapatra. The BJD struck back by getting two BJP leaders—vice-president Lekhasri Samantsinghar and Bhrugu Buxipatra—to switch sides. “Defections are happening on an industrial scale from both parties,” says a senior Odisha political observer. To fulfil its commitment of reserving 33 per cent of Lok Sabha candidacies for women, the BJD has resorted to nominating the wives of sitting candidates to contest. This has helped stem rebellion from existing members who would otherwise have been denied tickets, while also attracting women voters.

The BJP, on the other hand, even as it vociferously denounces Naveen, has so far not projected a CM candidate. Unlike Naveen who has stayed put in Odisha, the two BJP stalwarts, Dharmendra Pradhan and Baijayant Panda, who defected from the BJD in 2019, are not contesting assembly seats. Though the party’s performance and vote share have improved over the years, the BJP still relies heavily on PM Modi. All this gives Naveen, with his clean image and track record of uplifting Odisha over the past two decades, a decisive edge in the assembly stakes. But only on June 4 will we know whether Naveen Patnaik will make history or be history.

—with Arkamoy Datta Majumdar