Samikhsya Bureau
If freedom of speech means freedom to speak anything then all the political parties are deprived of that liberty and thus refuse to accept that, what they say is not what they do. Or, simply speaking, hiding behind pretensions and which happens when there is a battle line in a party in which two factions or more act against each other.
In the state units the disease of this kind is more chronic. More so when the party suffers a clash of interest to surpass each other.
In the Biju Janta Dal there can’t be so as no one tries to stand up to Nveen Patnaik and rest are parts of a fiefdom . In the Congress, it usually remains sunk in the depth of a high command culture yet there has been a perennial clash of interest in the state unit to cut each other’s roots. But it is all within the party and not that any fresher can afford to be a zealot.
But the present chemistry in the Bharatiya Janta Party is different. No other party has the advantage of having such a star-studded projection where nobody knows who heads them here. So a slight loose rope can unleash an unpremeditated fight after the polls.
So each old timers in the BJP sound to be suspicious about the new comers although at formal gatherings they sport a face with the proverbial glee before the cameras. But talking to some insiders one gets an impression that what one sees is not that in reality.
It is said that now there are two warring factions. One is the older group that believed in unity in diversity and the new one is, comprised of the ones who made their entries in the recent days. It is said that there is a race for supremacy on the run up, that might culminate in a battle for the prominent that now remains assuaged for the time being.
Going by his critiques aimed at the Chief Minister in last two years Bijayant Panda is supposedly an entity who nurtures bigger ambitions in Odisha politics and sensing that the old guards have somehow appear not so tolerant about his alleged hidden agenda, if any. Sources would have us believe that designs are in place to see that Panda does not succeed to do that. So get him defeated in Kendrapada would end the dilemma !
The old cadre knows well that the new entrants those who have been coasted by the central leadership may prove to be more hungry in case they win the seats they are contesting for. Besides Panda the old cadre has in its firing line the Bhubaneswar Lok sabha candidate Aparajita Sarangi who has remained an ambitious individual from her time in the government. Enjoying the blessings of Modi, likes of Panda or Sarangi, may prove to be very in subservient to the state leaders in the event of a win.
Carrying them as moral baggage before the elections and at the same time digging the pits for them to fall,is although oxymoronic in essence, but that is the tenet which is inseparable from politics. If the other star who left BJP to re-enter the party, Bijay Mohapatra, should not be in the illusion that, he will be another poll star in the BJP in case he wins the assembly seat. Win or lose, but enemies within seem to have no patience till that time and think it better to smother the prospects from now.
Seasoned politicians know it very well that, mainly going by the political philosophy in the great Britain in 1917 , ‘jealousy protects privilege’ and that exactly is the semantic politics lives with.
Principle has no role here and today politics has transformed to what the Mahatma had said way back, “politics without principle “, “ is a social sin “.
