BJD’s abstention in Vice Prez poll adds fodder to its pro-NDA image

The decision on the part of Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the principal opposition party in Odisha, to abstain from the 2025 Vice President poll has led the analysts to believe that the regional party is steadily losing relevance nationally, almost 15 months after it lost power to the BJP after 24 years of uninterrupted rule in the State.

The BJD, headed by Naveen Patnaik, lost to the BJP in both the 2024 Assembly polls and Lok Sabha polls. Patnaik, who never eyed pan-India expansion of the party, failed to check the BJP’s electoral juggernaut after staying at the helm of governance in the State for a record 24 years.

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The party, which governed the State uninterruptedly from 2000 to 2024, suffered its worst poll debacle by drawing a blank in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. It now remains content with 7 Rajya Sabha members, with two of its elected members switching fences to the BJP after the poll debacle and promptly re-elected to the upper house on a BJP ticket.

Speculation was rife that the BJD, which supported the ruling NDA on several key issues in the past 11 years, may vote in favour of INDIA bloc candidate for the VP poll, being held today, as several party stalwarts were in favour of such a move to reinvent itself to get rid of a pro-BJP image following the electoral loss in the 2024 twin polls. The move to abstain and not to cast votes in favour of the INDIA bloc candidate has apparently dented the regional party’s image.

BJD’s strength in both Houses was truncated after the Lok Sabha poll drubbing, as it failed to win a single seat. The party’s Rajya Sabha strength has also been trimmed to seven after two MPs — Sujit Kumar and Mamata Mahant — defected to the BJP and were promptly re-nominated by the saffron party. Although the regional party lacked the numbers to make a significant impact in the VP poll, casting a vote for the INDIA bloc rather than abstaining could have sent a louder message that the party does not serve the interests of the ruling alliance at the Centre.

The social media post of Tathagata Satapathy, former BJD MP and editor of a leading Odia daily, states that the regional party is resorting to self-destruction sums up the steady slipping of political relevance of the regional party at least in the national political scenario.

“Odisha’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD), by deciding to abstain in the Vice Prez election, seems to have hara-kiried its total political existence… whatever little remained”, Satapathy, who quit active politics in 2019, stated in a post on ‘X’.

The BJD’s move to abstain from the VP poll has triggered an avalanche of adverse reactions in social media circles.

Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee President Bhakta Charan Das slammed the BJD, saying that the BJD & the BJP are two sides of the same coin, and the Congress is the only opposition in Odisha, and BJD’s decision to abstain from the vote has proved it.

”This is nothing but a tacit endorsement of the BJP. Naveen Patnaik has opted to protect himself rather than his party. Senior BJD leaders are clearly afraid of central agencies breathing down their necks,” he charged.

Even inside the BJD, unease is palpable. Several senior leaders privately admit that the abstention has dented the party’s claim of being the principal opposition to the BJP in Odisha.

“Had MPs been allowed a conscience vote, as during the Waqf Bill, many would have backed the INDIA bloc candidate,” confided a veteran functionary.

By choosing not to take a stand, the BJD has once again left itself open to accusations of double-speak. Its assertion of “equidistance” looks increasingly hollow, as it has, over the past decade, sided with the BJP at the national level.

BJD’s stand in the previous VP poll is varied. It abstained in the 2012 poll, in which Hamid Ansari won. It backed non-NDA candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi in the 2017 poll, in which M Venkaiah Naidu won. In 2022, it extended its support to NDA candidate Jagdeep Dhankhar.