When Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik takes a drastic step against any leader in the party, the action is succeeded with almost nil remonstrance.
Soon after a leader has a fall from grace, he becomes a pariah, virtually an untouchable whom everybody in the party turns his or her back. Even in public, he has few takers. He is taken for granted almost in a negative line, as if he or she has committed a blunder that is unredeemable.
When Patnaik expelled a few frontline colleagues who had brought him to Odisha to take the mantle of the new outfit after the demise of his father and iconic Chief Minister Biju Patnaik, the sky came crashing down upon the king-makers. They have not been able to rehabilitate themselves as yet. Similar was the case of former party strategist Pyarimohan Mohapatra. He was the second power centre in the BJD, wielding power and privilege that few had enjoyed in the State.
The party functionaries kneeled down before him and touched his feet to be on the safe side. However, the grand old man in the party had to suffer high ignominy when he was accused of staging a coup against Patnaik and was dropped from the party on the charge. Mohapatra’s midnight operation cost him dear. His supporters were targeted; some were shorn of ministerial berths while a few were suspended from the party.
later, however, there were rapprochements to bring back some to the party fold.
When Mohapatra was expelled, the whole party justified the action against him. Most trenchant in their criticism against Mohapatra were some senior leaders, prominent of them being Minister Damodar Rout, MP Kalpataru Das and even to some extent, whether genuine or fake, Prafulla Ghadai.
Now, it is the turn of Ghadai. He had the bitter taste of having been sidelined in the party which was a precursor to her final removal. Ghadai probably could foresee it and what he did was to express his helplessness in the party to media. However, while doing it, he unwittingly tarnished the image of the boss. His blunder was as much grave as that of Mohapatra though they are of different kinds. While Mohapatra played treachery and hatched a conspiracy to oust Patnaik, Ghadai, even though he was telling the truth, had tried to shake the foundation of the party by blaming Patnaik since BJD is now synonymous with Patnaik and is solidly built upon his very personal charisma.
Patnaik by far has proved that he is not only clean and an efficient Chief Minister but also that he is the most brilliant politician in the State and is above all mundane and narrow considerations like grabbing property, getting involved in any scam. As a result, when the BJD is alleged to be scam-ridden, the other leaders in the party are pointed out while Patnaik goes unscathed. As long as other BJD leaders are not able to minimise the gap with Patnaik, they have to support blindly Patnaik for whatever he does and it is not democracy but Naveenocracy that will continue to haunt the ruling party.