The widely-expected inevitable happened.
The shoe that was aimed by a BJP supporter at Naveen Patnaik at a BJD election campaign meeting boomeranged and decisively torpedoed the already-tottering applecart of the saffron party in Bijepur.
The sympathetic feeling for the Chief Minister greatly added to the prevailing sympathy factor for BJD candidate Rita Sahu, who was seeking votes to “fulfil my husband’s unfulfilled dreams for the people of Bijepur”. The widow was wisely chosen as the BJD nominee for the by-election after the death of her MlA-spouse Subal Sahu.
And the ultimate result is the kind of the BJD’s sweeping victory over its nearest rival BJP even beyond its own expectations.
In fact, a series of BJP cadre-sponsored violent activities over the last few weeks including the attack on the house of Chief Minister’s Private Secretary Karthikeyan Pandian in Bhubaneswar and Minister Sushant Singh’s brother resulting in his driver’s death in Bijepur diminished the chances of a creditable electoral performance of the BJP.
It is now poor consolation for the BJP to claim that it has more than doubled its number of votes in Bijepur compared to the 2014 general elections. The party’s surge witnessed during the last year’s panchayat polls in the area in particular and western Odisha in general has clearly been very effectively dented by the BJD.
And the BJP’s assertion fuelled by its national president Amit Shah in September last year that it will achieve a “120+ Odisha Mission” (winning 120 seats in the 147-member State Assembly) in the next general elections sounds as a big joke.
The only comfort the BJP can take that it has edged out the Congress as the second political force in the State. As widely viewed, the BJP won’t advance much if its leaders do not eschew their “postures of arrogance” trying to bask in the glory of Narendra Modi.
As for the Congress, which lost its candidate’s deposit in Bijepur, the party’s stock will further plummet if its high command continues to ignore the crying need for a revamp of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) with a new leader.