Yielding no inch to friendly BJP

The longest serving chief minister of India, Naveen Patnaik of Odisha, is completing 22 years in office on March 5. Patnaik, 75, has been working mostly from home during the pandemic, rarely visiting the state secretariat or even the legislative assembly, but not really neglecting the politically useful chore of inaugurating development projects in the districts. Elections to the legislative assembly and the Lok Sabha are more than two years away, but elections to the three-tier panchayat bodies are being held this month. 

In the last panchayat elections in 2017 the BJP emerged as the main challenger to the ruling Biju Janata Dal, pushing the Congress to the third position and cutting into the BJD's vote base. It gave the impression that Patnaik might face difficulty in the assembly election in 2019. That apprehension was misplaced, and Patnaik returned as chief minister for the fifth consecutive term. His party won 112 seats, while the BJP more than doubled its strength to 23 seats and became the main opposition party. The Congress could manage only nine seats. In the simultaneous election to the Lok Sabha, the BJP won eight of 21 seats from Odisha, a gain of seven seats from its previous tally. The BJD, which had 20 seats in the Lok Sabha, lost eight seats, one of them to the Congress.

The two main parties have often engaged in political sparring, but the aggressiveness that the BJP displayed in the past elections is missing in the panchayat polls. The attitudinal change came about soon after the Lok Sabha polls, and it became more visible with the election of former IAS officer and entrepreneur Ashwini Vaishnaw as a BJP member of the Rajya Sabha with the BJD's support in June 2019. Two years later, Vaishnaw, 51, was made a Union cabinet minister and assigned important portfolios. He is minister of railways, electronics and information technology, and communications. No other politician from Odisha had ever assumed such eminence in any Union cabinet, not even the chief minister's father, Biju Patnaik, who was minister of steel and mines. Thanks to Vaishnaw, Odisha has been given a record Rs 9,734 crore for rail sector development in the 2022-23 budget, an increase of Rs 2,738.5 crore from the previous year. Odisha has yet another powerful BJP politician in the Union cabinet, Dharmendra Pradhan, the education minister.

The BJD has been supporting the Narendra Modi government in most issues in Parliament even before the induction of Vaishnaw. The Congress has claimed that the softness has something to do with CBI raids on BJD leaders in chit fund cases. The Union government, on its part, has been more generous to Odisha than to other states in matters like cyclone relief. It does not sit over Odisha's requests for assistance. 

As such, the panchayat elections may not be worrisome for Patnaik. Still, he is taking no chances. Before the election commission proclaimed the polls, Patnaik announced a record number of benefits to most sections of the population, as if it were an assembly election. Party symbols are allowed only in the zilla parishad (district council) tier of the panchayat polls, and in the last elections the BJD won 20 zilla parishads, taking 476 of 853 seats. The BJP won eight zilla parishads (297 seats) and the Congress two (60 seats). 

The BJD wants to win many more seats this time. Former minister Atanu Sabyasachi, MLA, says it will win all 853; other leaders of the party say they aim at 80 per cent. The BJP, too, is high on hope. Its general secretary Prithviraj Harichandan, son of the Andhra Pradesh governor, says the party will do better than in 2017. Congress spokesperson Manoj Mohapatra says people's anger against the state and Union governments will boost his party’s score. 

The elections are scheduled to be held from February 16 to 24. In the first tier, gram panchayats, voters will elect 6,801 sarpanches and 92,027 ward members. In the second tier, voters will elect 6,800 panchayat samiti members, who will then elect their chairpersons.

Though the campaigning is muted because of Covid protocols, Patnaik has created a buzz with his largesse. This includes a financial package to Mission Shakti assistants and Anganwadi staff, most of whom are women. A house repair assistance of Rs 3,000 each has been announced for beneficiaries of a rural housing scheme; Rs 1,441 crore has been released to owners of 31 lakh pucca houses. Besides, Rs 5,000 has been sanctioned for everyone identified as an eligible beneficiary, but not provided with a pucca house, to repair their own dwellings. Odisha is the only state to take such a step.

Street vendors have been given a Covid assistance of Rs 3,000 each. Nearly 96 lakh households have been given a livelihood assistance of Rs 1,000 each under the National Food Security Act. The upper age limit for recruitment to government jobs has been increased by six years from 32 to 38; for disadvantaged sections, the limit will be 43 years. Salaries of junior teachers in primary schools have been increased; and government employees given an additional dearness allowance of 3 per cent.

After the panchayat elections, there will be elections to five municipal corporations and 109 other urban local bodies. Here the slum dwellers are likely to get land rights. The Jagannath temple corridor project in Puri might help Patnaik counter votaries of the BJP’s hindutva; the Rs 800-crore heritage project envisages lush green space around the temple, wide corridors inside and outside for spiritual walks, renovation of ancient mutts and modern amenities for visitors. It is part of a Rs 3,208-crore project for Puri's all-round development under the ABADHA (Augmentation of Basic Amenities and Development of Heritage) scheme. A similar project is on in Bhubaneswar, around the equally acclaimed Lingaraj temple. All this is officially meant to boost tourism. But it has a message that good economics is also good politics.