By Ashutosh Mishra
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally at Baripada on Saturday was a big disappointment for the BJP leaders of Odisha who had hoped that he would launch an all out attack on chief minister Naveen Patnaik and his government in the state.
An unusually battle-shy Modi confined himself to making only occasional critical remarks about the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government on issues like women’s security but refrained from even naming the chief minister even once.
Modi had been similarly reluctant to take on Patnaik in his rally at Khurda on December 24. But while he has been fighting shy of challenging the Odisha chief minister, his confidant and BJP national president Amit Shah seems more than eager to lock horns with Patnaik.
During his last few visits to the state Shah has issued repeated calls to BJP cadres to “uproot” the BJD government and throw it into the Bay of Bengal. He has targeted the chief minister on issues like corruption, mining scam and violence against BJP workers and leaders in various parts of the state.
As far as Shah is concerned the battle lines between BJP and BJD have been clearly drawn in the state. He will neither give any quarter to his rival nor expect any. While Modi appears to be more pragmatic in his approach, trying not to offend Patnaik who could be a future ally, Shah is clear that Odisha chief minister is an enemy.
Shah’s strategy appeals to the state BJP leaders who are in no mood to compromise on the issue of taking on Naveen and his government. Their anger against the chief minister has multiplied several times since the collapse of the BJP-BJD alliance in 2009 and Patnaik’s bid to appropriate credit for all the good work done by the BJP ministers in the coalition government.
They blame this for the BJP’s shock defeat in the 2009 polls when, contesting all on its own, it could win only six assembly seats. In 2014, it somehow managed to reach a double digit figure with 10 seats. These defeats still rankle in the minds of BJP leaders for whom the chief minister continues to be their enemy number one in the state.
Ask leaders like Union minister Jual Oram and they will confirm that the party cannot hope to build itself into a fighting unit in the state without “exposing” Patnaik and his ministers. Oram, in fact, has been one of the most bitter critics of the chief minister with whom he had fought tooth and nail over the special concessions given to the South Korean steel giant POSCO when the state government had signed an MOU with it for setting up a steel plant in the state in 2005. Ever since, they have sparred over other issues as well.
For all such hardcore critics of Patnaik, Prime Minister Modi’s soft approach towards the Odisha chief minister is both painful and disappointing. Though Modi remains the BJP’s mascot and the party would fight the next elections under his leadership, for these leaders the ideal is Shah who sets both targets and the benchmarks for them.
