At a time when the country is bereft of a strong and united opposition, and the Congress, in particular, lacking that touch to regain its real form, in Odisha it appears persistently engaged in a suicidal syndrome.
It is in a kind of situation that can be best described, as if, someone eating it’s own flesh. A year after the general elections the residual hope of the party toeing back to its track. In addition, the dismal performance of the PCC chief, Niranjan Patnaik in the last polls heaped more trust deficit on his political relevance.
Reasons were many, as it comes out to the fore, but one moot point that, according to party insiders, was his working pattern suffering from a gross lack of consensus and rather driven by politics of preference or nepotism.
Few things combined to dig a pit in which Patnaik’s USP remained burried. His choice of selection of candidates in 2019 polls, in total disregard to the factors of winnability also made things worse for the party.
In fact, the root lies deeper in and those factors quickly decelerated the pace of his journey ahead to regain the minimum respectability, let alone, trust within and outside.
What adds to the plight of the state unit is the complete lack of a serious attention from the party high command thus setting an irreversible course towards peril.
Team-Odisha Congress caucus ready to fly!
So, at last, the same old game has resurfaced yet again. The ‘dissenters’ brigade is back in motion and voices for a change is heard again pitch-forking a new face like Mohammed Moquim, a Cuttack based legislator now playing the bag-piper role.
The other day there were few slogan cheerings in the Congress Bhavan which resonated across obviously with a note of dissent against the incumbent PCC chief by implication.
May be few days to go when a ‘team-Odisha’ of the Congress would be on board a flight to reach Delhi to crib before an already hallucinated high command to remove Niranjan Patnaik.
What is amusing that, the face of the rebellion is Moquim, a little known man having little outreach in coastal Odisha even, let alone the other parts of the state.
When there are few faces like Sarat Patnaik, a former MP and a known youth leader of the hey-day Congress era, or Prasad Harichandan or some fresh faces from the bench, the Moquim conglomerate, which does not even have the reputation of ease of wadding through the mess, require a second thought from the high command.
