On 7 May, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik conducted a major cabinet reshuffle, dropping 11 of his 21 ministerial colleagues to induct a new team of 10 in the council of ministers. He felt the need to revitalise the party and he removed the young brigade of ministers ostensibly for party work ~ a la the ‘Kamaraj Plan’.
The challenge posed by the rise of the BJP in Odisha called for replenishment of the BJD which had slipped into a pause or silent mode afflicted by the incumbency of 17 long years in power or the arrogance of power as critics point out.
Naveen Patnaik went to the extent of expressing his “gratefulness to ministers who had volunteered to resign and do party work” ~ another classic from the 1963 Kamaraj Plan.
Over the last 14 years (2000 to 2014) he had sacked several ministers without a word, let alone, a please or sorry. The message to the public at large was he does not spare anyone who comes “under a shadow of corruption or controversy”. That was his USP.
But in his fourth term (since 2014) he has compromised on this most valued public perception. Several ministers and party leaders mired in controversies and scandals remained untouched. And by expressing his gratitude to the ministers whom he dropped, he, in a way, confirmed the growing impression that he had turned ‘weak’.
For a person who had quoted Harold Wilson’s “a week is a long time in politics” to have fallen back on a 54- year-old political plan without realising the stark reality surprised many. Expectedly, it has turned out to be a disaster for the BJD. It was a badly-executed plan and sharp reactions came within hours of the reshuffle.
Lure of power and money governs politics. Even in the wildest imagination one would not expect the young ministerial brigade of the likes of Sanjay Das Burma, Arun Sahu and Pranab Das, who were holding fort in the party over the last three years to quit ‘voluntarily’ as had the stalwarts of yesteryear under the Kamaraj Plan.
Even the most naïve would not buy the Chief Minister’s version of ministers volunteering to do party work. Needless to state that Patnaik’s statement fell flat within seconds with many of the 11 sacked ministers informing the media that they were ‘asked to resign’. The projection of sacrifice and the “gratefulness” did not stand the test even for a minute.
So why did Patnaik try to sell the idea? Was he under compulsion or pressure from a certain quarter to somehow protect those who were dropped, lest they turn political whistle blowers causing a huge embarrassment to the party? Already there is talk of a sacked young minister lambasting a few holding them responsible for his plight while another of the youngsters who is regarded as the Man Friday of a bureaucrat has had a big say in the ministry making sure that leaders of certain districts like Cuttack, Jajpur, Kendrapara do not find place as replacements of those who were sacked. The political grapevine here is that the ‘controls’ are not in the hands of Patnaik. A sabotage from within to help the BJP is also doing the rounds of political circles here.
Lending some sort of credence to all such speculation is the fact, that of late, veteran MPs of the party like Baijayant Panda and Bhartruhari Mahatab have publicly referred to conspiracies and conspirators within the party. Another senior MP Tathagatha Satpathy too had tweeted about how the BJP is working overtime to engineer a split in the BJD and is allegedly taking the help of an ‘insider’.
Clearly the leader of a political party which suffers electoral reversals would try to focus on the region or constituencies where it had failed and in this case the BJD had conceded ground to the BJP in the western Odisha belt as well as the overlapping KBK region and tribal pockets. But the reshuffle, shockingly, left this entire region of 13 districts unrepresented as if it was giving up the fight before it had begun. BJD workers in these areas staged protests. Many of them may look for greener pastures.
Chief Minister Patnaik’s explanation that not all of the 30 districts can be accommodated under a ceiling of 21 ministers in the 147-member assembly does not hold good for the simple reason that he has overloaded districts like Ganjam, Puri-Khurda and a few others with more than two ministers. There are contiguous areas between Khurda and Puri which have four while Ganjam district alone has four ministers.
Patnaik also tried to undermine the resentment in the party saying only a few who had been expelled have joined the BJP. He glossed over the fact that scores of BJD workers have deserted the party.
If his attempted Kamaraj Plan flopped, so did another move. He is said to have attempted a stunning recovery by withdrawing Bishnu Das from the Rajya Sabha in a hurry, barely eight months after his nomination to send a potential ‘game changer’.
But somewhere down the line, something went wrong and it did not work out. He was forced to make a last minute change and nominate Pratap Kesari Deb to fill the vacancy. Certainly he had not asked Das to vacate for Deb.
There is more to it than meets the eye and the Lutyen’s Delhi circuit would know more about it than people or party men in Odisha.
Midway through his fourth term, Naveen Patnaik appears to be unnerved by the aggression of the BJP as well as the discordant voices from within. His failure to act against the tainted and the likes of an MP who has repeatedly defied his directive not to speak to the media on ‘negatives’ of the party have dented his carefully cultivated image of a clean, non-nonsense CM in full command of the party and government.
With the municipal elections next year Naveen Patnaik has little time to make course corrections and he has already messed up one such opportunity last week.
The writer is Resident Editor, The Statesman, Bhubaneswar.