The Majhi Moment

BY THE TIME the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced Mohan Charan Majhi, a tribal leader and four-time MLA from Keonjhar, as its first-ever chief minister in Odisha, VK Pandian, the man in the eye of the political storm that ended Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leader Naveen Patnaik’s 24-year tenure in the state, had already quit politics.

Patnaik’s trusted lieutenant, Pandian, a Tamil former IAS officer, gave BJP its ‘Odia asmita (Odia pride)’ mantra to take on the satrap who would have joined the league of the longest-serving chief ministers had his party won. BJP’s attack on Pandian as being the ‘outsider’ who held the reins of the Patnaik government found resonance among voters hankering for change in the state.

Right from BJP’s top leadership to its state leaders, guns were trained on Pandian.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while taking up the issue of the missing keys of the Ratna Bhandar, the Jagannath temple’s treasury containing the gold and jewellery offerings by devotees—the other emotive issue raised by BJP in the run-up to the polls—took a dig at Pandian, saying that according to people the keys have gone to Tamil Nadu.

It was in 2019 that BJP had laid the foundation of its rise to power in Odisha when its vote share in the Assembly rose by 14.5 per cent to 32.49 per cent, even though BJD swept the polls. In the state’s Lok Sabha seats, BJP won eight of the 21 seats, increasing its tally by seven, and its vote share by 16.9 per cent to 38.4 per cent. BJD won 12 seats then, a drop from 20 in the 2014 Lok Sabha election when the Modi wave had eluded the state. Odisha had figured in Amit Shah’s roadmap for BJP in 2019 as one of the priority states to make up for any losses in states where it had peaked in 2014. It had slowly captured the position of the main Opposition in the state from Congress. This time, in a reversal of the 2014 outcome, it is BJP which has won 20 seats, in an election where the Modi factor held sway. BJP’s vote share grew by 6.94 per cent to 45.34 per cent while BJD’s fell by 5.27 per cent to 37.53 per cent. In the Assembly election, vestiges of voter allegiance to Patnaik reflected in BJD’s vote share which is at 40.22 per cent, though it dropped by 4.49 per cent against BJP’s 40 per cent, a rise of 7.58 per cent. BJD, however, lost 62 seats with its tally coming down from 113 to 51 in the 147-member House, making way for BJP to form the state government.

Majhi’s name came as a surprise. The Santali tribal leader ticks all the boxes—humble background, risen from the grassroots, and untainted. A teacher at a local school, he became a sarpanch in 1997. In 2000 and 2004, when BJD and BJP were alliance partners, he won the Assembly election but lost in 2009 after the allies parted ways. He again lost in 2014 to BJD, but won in 2019 and 2024. Majhi, like President Droupadi Murmu, belongs totheSantal tribe, thethird-largest Sched­uled Tribe (ST) in the country, spread over the states of Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha. Patnaik was one of the first to back Murmu’s candidature, assuring her of every vote from his party. At the end of 2023, when BJP’s tribal outreach had paid off in Assembly elections in three states, it had announced Vishnu Deo Sai as the first tribal chief minister of Chhattisgarh where the community constitutes 30 per cent of the popula­tion. In Odisha, with nearly 23 per cent tribals, Majhi is the third tribal chief minister after Congress’ Giridhar Gamang and Hemananda Biswal. In a balancing act, BJP also announced two deputy chief ministers in Odisha—Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo, six-time Patnagarh MLA and the grandson of former Odisha Chief Minister Rajendra Narayan Singh Deo, and Pravati Parida, a first-time MLA from Nimapada in the coastal Puri district. Deo, whose wife Sangeeta Singh Deo is Balangir MP, is from the royal family of the erstwhile princely state of Patna, Balangir, and held cabinet portfolios in the BJD-BJP government in the state. Parida is a high court lawyer who fought the Assembly elections four times. She was the state president of the party’s women’s wing and is the first woman deputy chief minister in a state where Patnaik’s focus on women’s empowerment, with Mission Shakti benefitting women’s self-help groups, had been a game-changer for BJD.

BJP’s best-known face from the state, Dharmendra Pradhan, who was seen as the party’s chief ministerial candidate, and Jual Oram, its tribal face in the state and six-time MP from Sundergarh, have been given Cabinet berths in the Modi govern­ment. With BJP’s overall Lok Sabha tally falling by 63 seats, the party would not want to risk losing any seat in a bypoll. Pradhan defeated BJD’s Pranab Prakash Das in Sambalpur, a seat held by BJD since 1998.

With Patnaik seen to be on cordial terms with Modi till about two months before elections, it was Pandian whom BJP made its main target, as it unleashed its Central and state leaders besides chief ministers to campaign in the state. The strategy had started gaining momentum last summer when Pandian emerged from being behind the scenes to hit the road across the state, shaking hands and listening to people’s grievances as an emissary of the chief minister. BJP MP Aparajita Sarangi, a former bureaucrat, along with the party’s state chief Manmohan Samal, lodged a complaint with the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), saying Pandian was using state helicopters, attending public receptions, and announcing new projects in violation of the All India Services (Conduct), or AIS, rules.

Even in the run-up to the 2019 polls, Pandian was believed to have had a say in party affairs, including the selection of candi­dates, strategy and campaign. After BJD returned to power in the state, his role got bigger. He was appointed secretary 5T (Trans­parency, Teamwork, Technology, Time and Transformation) along with being private secretary to the chief minister. In the absence of a second-rung leader to take over from the 77-year-old Patnaik, the spotlight was on Pandian, who is 50. As BJD’s politi­cal rivals’ accusations against Pandian of flouting bureaucratic norms mounted, he quit the IAS about six months before the 2024 elections to become a full-fledged politician. The move only amplified the Opposition’s charges, vindicating its stand that he had strayed into the political arena. As the campaign heated up, BJP leaders raised questions about Patnaik’s health. At a public meeting at Mayurbhanj, one of Modi’s rallies, near the end of the campaign, the prime minister promised to set up a special committee to probe the reasons for his “deteriorating” health, hinting at a conspiracy.

Patnaik has said his hectic campaigning should be enough to give a verdict on his health. After BJD’s debacle, Pandian, who had pledged to take “sanyas” from politics if Patnaik did not become chief minister again, in a video message announcing his decision to quit, apologised to the “Biju Parivar”, including party workers. “I am sorry if this campaign narrative against me has had a part to play in BJD’s loss.” He said his reason for joining politics was only to assist “Naveen Babu” and now he had decided to withdraw himself from active politics. Patnaik has come to the defence of his aide, saying that pinning the blame on him for BJD’s defeat was unfortunate.

Before Pandian had come into the picture, Patnaik had turned to Pyarimohan Mohapatra, an Odia bureaucrat-turned-politician who was his father Biju Patnaik’s principal secretary, for advice. But the relationship ended bitterly in 2012 when Patnaik heard of Mohapatra’s unsuccessful ‘coup’ attempt when he was abroad. Pandian’s calling it a day leaves a vacuum for Patnaik who has to chalk out a future strategy for his party while ensuring that he keeps his flock together. Patnaik himself lost from Kantabanji, the second seat he fought, to BJP by 16,344 votes, and won his traditional Hinjili Assembly constituency by a margin of just 4,636 votes, the lowest ever since he started contesting. A former BJP ally, Patnaik had refused to formally enter an alliance with either the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, but has backed the Modi government on several Bills and policies since it came to power in 2014.

BJP’s victory can be attributed to the party positioning itself as safeguarding Odia pride, by taking up Pandian’s dominance and his Tamil roots, raising the Jagannath temple’s Ratna Bhandar issue, and the Modi factor. “Ram may not have helped BJP in the north, but in Odisha, though Hindutva does not have an overpowering sway, Lord Jagannath gave BJP an advantage,” says Bhubaneswar-based political analyst Rabi Das.

Tathagata Satpathy, a former BJD MP and editor of Dharitri, a Bhubaneswar-based Odia daily, agrees, saying that while there is no aggressive Hindutva, the brand of Hinduism practised in Odisha is of a high order. “Jagannath is an all-encompassing God, a part of Odia culture, not so much religion. The Parikrama project also hurt people. The idea that a former bureaucrat could take over the state was not digested by the people. It’s not so much the victory of BJP as it is the defeat of BJD.”

Dharmendra PradhanGeneral election 2024Mohan Charan MajhiNaveen PatnaikOdishapoliticsVK Pandian