Odisha’s Draupadi Murmu, the first tribal woman Governor in the country recently appointed to the exalted post in Jharkhand, went to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s residence in Bhubaneswar on June 15 to pay a courtesy visit to him.
This came as a surprise in political circles and as a shock to many in the Odisha opposition parties who considered a Governor’s visit to a Chief Minister’s house as an act of breach of protocol and dignity associated with the high office.
And two days later on June 17, Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das made a statement in Bhubaneswar against Naveen Patnaik describing the latter as “a king and not a loksevak”.
Both Draupadi Murmu and Raghubar Das are BJP leaders, and the former was, not surprisingly, chosen by the NDA Government at the Centre as a Governor. The BJP national leadership obviously thinks that elevating Murmu to a gubernatorial position would garner tribal votes for the party in the two neighbouring States of Odisha and Jharkhand.
What an irony, feel political observers, that on one hand Murmu reverentially calls on Naveen Patnaik and on the other hand Raghubar Das castigates his Odisha counterpart as not a “people’s servant”!
More funnily, the BJP’s national Scheduled Tribe wing held its executive meeting in Bhubaneswar on June 16 and 17 and adopted a resolution that the Naveen Patnaik Government is “anti-tribals”.
The BJP national ST unit meeting was no doubt organised in Bhubaneswar at Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram, who is an Odisha tribal leader and who is apparently trying to build a tribal lobby in the BJP State unit in anticipation of a race for Chief Minister’s post in an event of the BJP coming to power in the next elections. It was for this purpose that Oram roped in Congress leader Giridhar Gamang, a tribal leader of Koraput, to the BJP, though Gamang is virtually a spent force and unlikely to strengthen the BJP’s tribal vote base.
Indeed, the image of the BJP in Odisha is constantly on the wane due to the party’s high command’s pro-Naveen Patnaik stand, the latest evidence of which was Draupadi Murmu’s meeting with Patnaik.
Odisha BJP leaders continue to cry against the Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal Government for its various acts of commission and omission. But people do not take the State leadership seriously as they find Narendra Modi publicly endearing Patnaik as his “Mitra” and Sushma Swaraj indulgently calling the Chief Minister as “Naveenbhai”. And BJP national president Amit Shah is on record saying that he would choose his own time when, if at all, he would comment against the Patnaik administration.
In the situation, the BJP State leaders’ assertion that the party has almost won the 2019 elections is ridiculous.