Will Odisha experience split ticket voting or straight ticket voting in 2019? This question is raised in political circles in the State, where the elections ended on April 29 with people eagerly waiting for the results to be declared on May 23.
The State has witnessed several elections since 1952, but not the one like this time. The three major political parties of the State were in the fray. The peculiarity was that the ruling BJD struggled to retain its position while the main opposition Congress was sliding and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was rising.
Though the simultaneous polls were being held in Odisha since 2004, people had never before felt that they too elected MPs along
with MLAs. Parliamentary polls were being held alongside the Assembly elections and continued to remain a straight voting.
However, this time there was a clear difference. Leaders of all parties urged the voters to push button twice, one for the MLA and the other for MP. In previous polls, no such requests had been made.
Ahead of the poll process, CM and BJD president Naveen Patnaik told people that no national party would get a clear majority at the Centre and, therefore, the BJD would play a crucial role in the formation of the Union Government. Therefore, the BJD supremo stressed on the Lok Sabha polls as well as on the Assembly elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought re-election claiming that he is the fittest leader to protect the national security. In fact, India’s airstrikes on the Pakistani terror units after the Pulwama massacre changed the whole election scenario in the BJP’s favour in the country as well as in Odisha.
Though Congress fielded candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, it appeared lagging behind its rivals. Last time, the Congress candidates had been defeated in all the 21 Lok Sabha seats while BJD won 20 seats leaving one for the BJP.
Since Modi seeks continuance of his position at the national level, the BJP put more efforts for the Parliamentary polls.
The BJP created a space for itself in Odisha due to Modi, who successfully bridged the gap between a Prime Minister and the people of due to his frequent visits to the State. Though Manmohan Singh had remained Prime Minister for 10 years from 2004 to 2014, he visited the State not more than three times.
Modi came to Odisha at least 12 times since 2014 including eight times for election campaign for which Naveen Patnaik called the visit of BJP leaders to Odisha as “election tourism,”
The BJP leadership clearly understood that the party has no leader in Odisha matching Patnaik's stature.
Therefore, Modi this time pitted himself against Patnaik. Though there was a Modi wave in 2014, it could hardly affect Odisha because of the strong grassroots existence of the BJD.
However, the BJD’s fourth term somehow became controversial. The mining scam and the chit fund irregularities were also there in the 2014 elections, but those could hardly affect the BJD.
This time, however, the BJD’s lack of connect with people was visible which helped the BJP gain ground.
Damodar Rout, Baijayant Panda, Raghunath Mohanty, Arjun Sethi and many other active politicians left the BJD and joined the BJP. It is a fact that people vote for BJD in the name of Naveen Patnaik.
But with a large number of BJD leaders joining the BJP, the goings were not that easy for the regional party to ensure its fifth straight term in power.
Though the Congress wanted to bounce back to power under Niranjan Patnaik’s leadership after two decades, lack of proper management on the part of the AICC and the OPCC clipped the grand old party’s wings. In the process, the BJP emerged as the main challenger of the BJD.
In about 100 of the 147 Assembly seats, the BJP seems to have posed a serious challenge to the BJD while Congress candidates have come up to contest level in only 20 segments.
Similarly, of the 21 Lok Sabha seats, the BJD had straight fight with the BJP in about 18 constituencies while the Congress became the main rival in 3 seats.
The BJP’s rise is attributed to the Modi wave in wake of the Pulwama-Balakote factor. This resulted in the split voting by a large number of people, one for the BJP for Lok Sabha and the other for the BJD for the Assembly.
The welfare schemes certainly played an important role this time. As Patnaik took all credit over the cheap rice scheme and other such programmes, Modi was forced to explain that the Centre contributed the most to the rice scheme.
The agrarian crisis was another major factor to impact the polls for which Patnaik implemented the KALIA scheme after realising that the BJP lost three major Hindi heartland States for ignoring farmers.
A significant factor was that Women Self Help Groups influenced women to vote for the BJD in huge numbers. Patnaik fielded 33 per cent women candidates in the Lok Sabha polls. A vast majority of women reportedly voted for the BJD.
Youths on their part seemed favouring Modi in a big way being inspired by the Balakote airstrike episode.