All was well in the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), led by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, till February 13 when the first phase polling in the panchayat elections was held. Initial results indicated the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the main challenger to the ruling party.
Things took a U-turn after that with the BJP doing well in all five phases of the polls and finally replacing the Congress as the BJD’s main rival in the State.
First salvo
Cracks started appearing in the BJD after the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Tathagata Satpathy, expressed his apprehension through a series of tweets that the BJP was working hard to divide the BJD in Parliament and maybe even in the Assembly. Mr. Satpathy tweeted that the BJP wanted an “AIADMK-type” split.
Mr. Satpathy’s tweets appeared on March 27, a few days after the BJP announced it would hold its two-day national executive meeting in Bhubaneswar on April 15 and 16, with eyes set on the simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in Odisha in 2019.
Although Mr. Satpathy did not mention any name, but tweeted that rumours were afloat that only one MP will swing the deal for the BJP, his party colleague in the Lok Sabha Baijayant Panda, in response to a question on Twitter, tweeted that his party’s chief whip had the experience of being suspended from the BJD and joining another party.
But things didn’t come to an end. An article written by Mr. Panda, stating that it was time for the BJD to introspect, appeared in a leading Odiya daily the next day (March 28). He mentioned that bureaucrats were not only running the government but also the party, which many of his senior party colleagues took as a serious allegation against the party leadership.
Mr. Panda’s article had reached the daily newspaper’s office five days before it was published, and was printed on the same day on which the two BJD MPs engaged themselves in a war of tweets.
Mr. Panda also circulated the English translation of his Odiya article on Twitter, inviting strong criticism from many of his party colleagues for taking the party’s internal matters to the public domain.
Although some BJD leaders agreed with Mr. Panda’s description of the party’s present situation in his article, they criticised him saying that he should have discussed those issues with Mr. Patnaik instead of making them public.
Although Mr. Patnaik did not react to the tweets and the article, his sister and eminent writer Gita Mehta came rushing to Bhubaneswar on March 28 and they held a series of meetings at Naveen Nivas.
As the demand has been growing from within the party for disciplinary action against Mr. Panda, sources say that Mr. Patnaik has asked some of his senior colleagues to examine the MP’s tweets and article.
