Samikhsya Bureau
Earlier it has been highlighted in our site as what went wrong with the Bharatiya Janata Party in few parts of western Odisha where it had made a few grave miscalculations in its choice for two major Lok Sabha constituencies – Bargarh and Sambalpur. They have become focal points where, as already analysed in these pages, the BJP has refused to see beyond its nose, perhaps.
Whispers could be heard in and around that it were all the product of a clash between personal likes and dislikes. Now it has become resounding after state vice president Subash Chauhan quit the BJP.
When electoral politics gets detached from the ground reality, then it jeopardises prospects of a candidate. Or, it may be the case that the BJP’s central leadership is doing a kind of crystal ball gazing by completely outsourcing the political fortune to a state leadership, which is now afflicted by inner-contradictions.
Chauhan’s case is already in public domain and he has hardly minced words to ventilate his anger by stating that the entire conspiracy to keep him out of the fray was the handiwork of ‘one man’. His position merits itself for public sympathy because in 2014 he had proved his mettle by losing the Bargarh Lok Sabha by a very thin margin.
Rest is history; That he had been working hard to reorganise the cadre and harness the grassroots spread and so on.
But what went wrong that Chauhan was deprived of a second chance? That must compel the central leadership now to reassess its approach modality to the situations in states.
What one can gather from observations of people intricately linked with western Odisha politics, it was not the case of winnability criteria that saw Chauhan’s egress but there is something more than the eyes can see. Perhaps, the leadership must go for a rewind of the details on Bargargh and realise how Chauhan, then a first timer, fresh from being a Sangh ‘pracharak’ scaled the heights to garner a whopping 3,72,000 votes as a debutante.
Something is seriously wrong with the decision as it appears and people of that area who owed their allegiance to the BJP have a legitimate right to know the man who forced Chauhan to an emotional outburst and exit.
Politics is not a stuff that can be handled with any strong likes and dislikes those may be of personal nature.
Many wonder as what transpired that dramatic yet ‘foolish’ flip-flop to dispatch senior BJP leaders Suresh Pujari to Bargarh. Pujari has been made a Lok Sabha candidate for the Bargarh Lok Sabha instead Sambalpur.
Political analysts foresee that the future of a popular political heavyweight like Pujari may suffer a premature closure of fate on the soils of Bargarh. Is he going to be the L.K. Advani of BJP in Odisha?
