Amit Shah hopes to cash in on BJD turmoil in four Lok Sabha seats

Bhubaneswar: On a daylong visit to Odisha on January 18, BJP president Amit Shah will have separate meetings with booth-level workers of four Lok Sabha seats where BJD has witnessed political turmoil in recent times. This is being seen as a BJP strategy to fish in the troubled BJD waters.
Shah is scheduled to meet party workers from Kendrapada, Jagatsinghpur, Cuttack and Jajpur at Salipur in Cuttack district in his first visit to the state this year. Though traditional BJD strongholds, the regional party has witnessed different kinds of intra-party squabbles in these areas after the simultaneous 2014 Lok Sabha and state assembly elections.

The political situation in Kendrapada is volatile after its MP Baijayant Panda, BJD’s erstwhile prominent face in New Delhi and industrialist, resigned from the party in May last year and from the Lok Sabha (LS) in June following his simmering differences with the party leadership.

Similarly in Jagatsinghpur, the BJD stands divided after the party expelled former minister Damodar Rout, who represents Paradip assembly segment, which is part of Jagatsinghpur LS seat, in September last year. In Cuttack, two MLAs — Pravat Tripathy and Prabhat Biswal — were arrested in 2014 and 2017 respectively for their alleged link with chit fund scam and are out on bail, raising a question mark over their candidature in this year’s poll. In Jajpur, BJD veteran and former minister Prafulla Ghadai was expelled from the party in September 2014 following his ‘outbursts’ against Naveen published in an Odia daily.

With simultaneous Lok Sabha and state assembly elections a few months away, Shah is likely to interact with the booth-level workers and boost their morale in these areas. This apart he would get direct inputs from the grassroots workers which could come handy for his party strategy, said a BJP insider.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address a public meeting at Balangir on January 15, his third in a month in Odisha after rallies in Khurda on December 24 and Baripada on January 5, Shah would pursue his booth management formula.

The BJD feels the aggressive political activities by the BJP would hardly make any impact on the regional party. “It is visible that the BJP is giving huge focus on Odisha and is adopting different tactics to do better here especially after its débâcle in heartland states. But nothing will matter with the rising popularity of chief minister Naveen Patnaik,” said BJD MLA and spokesperson Samir Ranjan Dash. Sasmit Patra, another BJD spokesperson, said in Odisha, there is a pro-incumbency ambience because of the performance and pro-people initiatives of the Naveen government. “No BJP strategy can work when people are with Naveen,” he said.