Now that the invincibility of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha has taken a drubbing in the ongoing panchayat elections with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tearing through the ruling party’s citadels, a blame game signifying intraparty feuds has begun unfolding.
While an apparently crestfallen BJD boss and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is yet to react to the party’s diminishing fortunes, his cohorts are coming out in the open to blame their chosen elements in the party for its setback.
Minister Damodar Rout now refers to the “Bibhisans” (saboteurs) in the BJD who, he says, are responsible for the party’s electoral reverses. Apparently, Rout points fingers at some heavyweights in the party whom he has been opposed to and has now the occasion to attack.
As per Rout, the saboteurs consist of some Ministers and bureaucrats. When he speaks of the bureaucrats, it is almost aimed at Naveen Patnaik, who is generally accused of running his Government on the advice of a handful of IAS officers.
Joining the race for exposing those supposedly liable for the BJD’s loss of face in the elections, another senior leader and former Minister, Surjya Narayan Patro, accuses many MlAs and MPs of the party of working in conflicting directions in their concerned areas.
Patro, more significantly, laments that the various corruption charges levelled against party leaders, including Ministers, have not been probed, leading to people’s doubts about running of the Government in a transparent manner. Besides, there has been no effective assessment of the Ministers’ performances, he maintains.
How Naveen Patnaik would take Patro’s observations is another matter. Patro has been quietly nursing a grudge that he has been deprived of a Minister’s berth after the last Assembly polls though as many as three others, including a quite junior one from his Ganjam district, are Ministerial beneficiaries.
Interestingly, Patro as a BJD spokesperson has earlier been defending the Government against all criticisms, especially allegations against party leaders, and ridiculing the opposition parties’ electoral aspirations at the BJD’s cost.
It all now boils down to signs of open differences in the ruling party once its electoral victory spree has been halted.