Samikhsya Bureau
Volumes have been written on the Patkura Assembly election where someone’s survival and another’s prestige are at loggerheads. A galaxy of star campaigners are there to support their candidates But the extra mile that the Biju Janata Dal has walked to keep the spirits of the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Bijoy Mohapatra down stands out.
Which is politically logical regardless of the gravity of the enmity between Naveen Patnaik and Mohapatra stretching over two decades.
But, in the minds of many political observers, one question remains unanswered is, is it the challenge from the BJD that Mohapatra has to face or there is any other threat from within his party. This now comes out in the air that, there is an entrenched design by a faction of the BJP which is not in support of a win by Mohapatra.
Lending credence to this notion some poll watchers in Patkura and Kendrapada opine that, even some top leaders in the state leadership are not ready to forget the days when Mohapatra was critical about the way of running things in the BJP and even made it, in more than one occasions, public through interactions with the media. Ostensibly, in his target was the Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and his supporters. That left the latter action miffed and which ultimately led to a situation when Mohapatra resigned from the BJP , albeit to re-join days before the general elections.
That was a crack which has apparently not been mended and such scars remain green for many time to come. So, in Patkura, the vestiges of hopes for Mohapatra to contest the might of Naveen Patnaik and his team, feel observers, gets severely impaired by the interests within the BJP than from outside.
It is an wound that neither Mohapatra can see for himself not can he openly lament over it at a time when the poll is just five days to go.
Some poll watchers hold the view that Mohapatra had a long relationship with the sentiments of people of Kendrapada in general and Patkura in particular, which by his recent efforts at rejuvenation may yield him lot of dividends but ‘ if people from within the party are inimical towards his political revival, then God alone can help him’, rued a leader from the BJP seeking anonymity.
