State Congress dissident leader Soumya Ranjan Patnaik has mellowed down in view of the move to take disciplinary action against him for his anti-party activities.
He has ceased putting up a brave front and seems to have abandoned his ‘Sankalp Abhiyan’ across the State in defiance of Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Jayadev Jena’s leadership.
The PCC Disciplinary Committee, headed by senior party leader Harihar Karan, has, meanwhile, reportedly rejected Patnaik’s reply to the showcause notice served on him and recommended to the AICC for taking action against him.
Senior party leader and Union Minister Jairam Ramesh, during his recent visit to the State to address a party rally at Kendrapada, had also clearly stated that Patnaik’s activities amounted to organisational indiscipline.
He had also observed that Patnaik could join any other party but should not indulge in indiscipline in the Congress as long as he is in the party.
Meanwhile, according to observers, no other major party is willing to entertain Patnaik in its fold in the context of his past political track record. Patnaik had joined the BJP before coming to the Congress on the eve of the 1995 general elections at the behest of his father-in-law JB Patnaik, former Odisha Chief Minister and present Assam Governor.
Soumya Patnaik then left the Congress and joined with Sharad Pawar in the latter’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which he also quit shortly later to be back in the Congress with the support of JB Patnaik and elder brother Niranjan Patnaik.
It was after Niranjan Patnaik’s replacement as PCC president by Jayadev Jena in May this year that Soumya Patnaik turned a rebel in the party and launched his Sankalp Abhiyan to bring in ‘reforms’ in the State party. According to party sources, he did so being upset over the possibility of not getting party ticket to contest in the next elections in the absence of his brother at the helm of
the PCC.