This is the most sweeping reshuffle in his Ministry Naveen Patnaik has undertaken since coming to power in the State in 2000. And it seems to be a gamble on his part in the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) structure obviously as a move to fight a possible surge by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the 2019 general elections.
The question is whether the whopping number of nine BJD leaders, young and old, who have been dislodged from the Ministry, will be happy to devote their time to party organisational work as Patnaik wants them to do. In fact, the deprived Ministers are not at all cheerful when they give their reactions to the media.
These leaders’ body language shows they have been forced to gulp down the bitter ‘Kamraj Plan’ pill. They almost in unison parrot a statement that “Ministry reshuffle is a normal process” and the Chief Minister has the prerogative to make changes in his team as and when he desires so.
The Chief Minister maintains that these Ministers themselves opted out of Ministerial berths for party work at the field level. And these leaders ditto the boss’s words with wryness writ large on their faces giving an impression that they are ‘disgraced’.
Interestingly, one of the ‘targeted’ Ministers, a senior one, Debi Prasad Mishra, in his talk to the media betrayed the apparently real reason behind their departure from power. He said, unlike others, that he quit the Ministry as Chief Minister and party supremo wanted so for undertaking organisational work.
Political observers feel Patnaik has taken a bold decision on the Ministry changes to strengthen the party in the wake of its reverses in the panchayat polls to the gains of the BJP. But if the affected leaders do not adhere to his scheme of things and if some of them tilt towards the BJP in the event of a further popular swing in the saffron party’s favour, Patnaik’s effort may boomerang on him and the BJD.
In this context, an important aspect of the reshuffle is no representation of many districts where the BJD lost the recent panchayat elections to the BJP. The point is how wise this decision is from the angle of refurbishing the BJD’s image in these areas. The districts are Sambalpur, Sundargarh, Kalahandi, Balangir, Malkangiri and Gajapati.