Can Bansal-Santosh-Vijayapal Trio Win Kalinga Which Modi, Shah Failed to Accomplish?

Bhubaneswar: Three veteran leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — Sunil Bansal, B L Santosh and Vijaypal Singh Tomar —  have been assigned to accomplish a tough mission;—  to win Kalinga (Odisha) from the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) led by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

The trio, already camping in the state ahead of the twin Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, however, finds the battle is not that easy and fraught with multiple challenges, many of them posed by the party’s state unit rather than the key rival, BJD.

For the trio, at least for now, Odisha appears to be a tough terrain to wage a sustained battle against the well-entrenched BJD that has been ruling the state for over 24 years now.

Soon after their arrival in Odisha a month ago, the trio found the Odisha unit was completely in disarray and desperately failing to present itself as a fighting force vis-à-vis the BJD. Lack of unity and consistency in raising issues sustainably has also marred the party’s successive Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

In 2000, the BJP, then a coalition partner of the BJD, had won 38 of the 64 assembly seats it contested at an enviable strike rate (SR) of 59.37 per cent.

However, the strike rates dropped significantly in subsequent assembly polls. In 2004, the party’s seat tally dropped to 32 (strike rate 50 per cent) which further nosedived to 6 seats in 2009 (SR 4.8 per cent).  In 2014 and 2019, the party bagged 10 (SR 6.80 per cent) and 23 (15.75 per cent) seats, respectively.

According to insiders, camouflaged involvement of certain top leaders of the saffron party in mining and other businesses has also accounted for the corrosion of the party’s vote bank. These leaders, apparently to protect their business interests and buy peace with the state government’s investigating agencies, have been keeping mum. Such quid pro quo attitude of the top leaders, the insiders maintained, has demoralised the party’s rank and file at the grassroots.

In villages and urban centres where the workers and volunteers of BJP and its affiliated organisations in the later 1990s thundered with slogans against corruption and nepotism, the party has lost its charm and appeal. This fact was well-reflected in 2022 polls which saw it win only 42 of the 854 Zilla Parisad seats, 255 less than its 2017 tally.

The trio was also surprised to see the party has lost 8 of the nine assembly by-polls it fought since 2019. The losses include Balasore seat which it had won in 2019. Retaining the Dhamnagar seat was the only saving grace for the saffron party.

In 2019, the then BJP president and present home minister had set a 120-plus assembly seats target for the party. However, the party had to be content with a paltry 23 seats, despite massive campaigning by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and many other top leaders.

Not only in 2019, Modi has been on Odisha’s campaign trail since 2009 when the BJP was ejected by the BJD president Naveen Patnaik from an 11-year-old alliance with his party.

Keeping the BJD in good humour all these years apparently to get the regional party’s support for passing bills in Rajya Sabha and electing persons to top constitutional positions, including President of India, has robbed the BJP of its firepower. On the other hand, it has created a public perception of both the parties working together as unofficial “all-weather” allies.

“For Sunil Bansal, B L Santosh and Vijaypal Singh Tomar, the great challenge is now to project themselves as the true opposition against the BJD. They need to build a tempo through protests and demonstrations on issues of corruption and irregularities. Such exercises will help the party shed its image of a hidden partner of the BJD,” says Professor Dr Kishore Chandra Swain, a retired political science teacher.

The BJP appears to be in a dilemma as to which issues it should raise or bank on to win the voter’s confidence. Between 2014 and 2019, it had heavily banked on chit fund and mining scams to corner the BJD. These two issues had seemingly given some results as the party bagged 8 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats and increased its assembly seat tally from 10 to 23. However, until a few days ago when the party revived these two issues and sought probes by the Central Bureau of Investigation, there was “mysterious calm” in the state saffron camp, fuelling a tacit understanding between the two parties.

“The greatest challenge before the BJP state unit is that it has to repel the perception of having a secret pact with the BJD for winning maximum number of Lok Sabha seats in lieu of allowing the latter to win the more number of assembly seats to retain power in the state for the sixth consecutive term,” said Dr Swain.