Samikhsya Bureau
Since more than six months the most discussed leader in Odisha who has been able to create a cyclic blast of speculations and rumours over his future in politics is Baijayant Panda, erstwhile member of Parliament from Kendrapada. Hardly a week passes without a news item, here and there, regarding Panda’s joining this or that party, or about his plans to float a new party or joining a new combination, cobbled by leaders of same fate.
There was a news on Sunday that Panda is finally joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the party’s Delhi headquarters. And, interestingly, the news, either spread by his apologists or planted by his detractors, is one of the dozen such when Panda’s political road map was scripted by a certain section of the media. Even, Panda himself, for a while, must have felt the pinch of the tediousness of the rumour when his name can be used with such ruthless ease.
Be that as it may, it will not be a big news anymore if he joins the saffron camp. Or, he may borrow a lesson from leaders like Bijay Mohapatra and Dilip Ray those who remained in that party but at last managed to exit with a lingered spitefulness. Because the BJP here in Odisha itself faces a lot of ifs and buts and nobody knows what happens to paratroopers.
One thing is clear that Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan is so far the poster-boy and for any new entrant at this juncture, the side-lines are the only place for temporary solace. No BJP poster is complete minus Pradhan and this has been clearly observed from what happened to former IAS Aparajita Sarangi who trooped in from Delhi like a twister but has now settled down to calm. As such, within the BJP here there are lot of ambiguities over the leadership issue. Even old-timers like Pratap Sarangi now figure among the souls who hold back their horses for the simple reason that the one-up-man-ship prevailing in the state unit is mandated from the top.
So, in the present climate when the run up to 2019 polls is just days away, the BJP leadership may not prefer to invite any shifting winds to affect the fulcrum in the state by including leader like Panda who, perhaps, can not stand the bitterness of subservience.
