Why are the BJD and BJP joining forces against Congress in Odisha

Fifteen years after they parted ways, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Odisha's number one and two parties, are likely to join forces against the number three party, an enfeebled Congress, for the forthcoming elections to the state's 147 Assembly and 21 Lok Sabha seats.

The alliance is likely to be formally announced soon. It will mark a return to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) of one of its original constituents. The BJD was part of the NDA when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee shaped it in May 1998. In January, another constituent of the original NDA, the Janata Dal (United), in its avatar as the Samta Party, returned to the NDA.

The BJD has nine seats in the Rajya Sabha. Its readmission into the NDA would mean that the alliance will cross the majority mark in the Upper House for the first time since 2014. Currently, the NDA, with 117 seats in a 240-member Rajya Sabha with five vacancies, is four seats short of the majority mark.

The BJD's return would burnish the BJP's efforts at building a perception of plausibility for its slogan "abki baar chaar sau paar", that the NDA would surpass the tally of 400 Lok Sabha seats, and the BJP come close to its target of winning 370 seats. Only once has a party or coalition breached the 400 mark since 1951-52. The Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress breached the mark in 1984.

According to an official statement, party president Naveen Patnaik discussed the BJD's strategy for the forthcoming Lok Sabha and Assembly polls with the party's senior leadership in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday. They "resolved" that since Odisha will complete 100 years of its statehood by 2036, and Patnaik and Odisha have "major milestones to achieve", the BJD will do "everything towards this in the greater interests of the people of Odisha". BJP's Odisha leaders met with their party's top leadership in New Delhi. BJP's Odisha MP Jual Oram told reporters that the central leadership will decide on the alliance.

A 'major milestone' beckons Patnaik by mid-August. The 78-year-old Odisha CM is on the cusp of creating history. He must win the forthcoming Assembly polls to become India's longest-serving chief minister and beat the record of Sikkim's Pawan Kumar Chamling. Patnaik completed 24 years as Odisha's CM on March 5, also the birth anniversary of his father, Biju Patnaik.

Sources close to the BJD leadership speculated that, as part of their seat-sharing agreement, the BJP will likely contest two-thirds of the 21 Lok Sabha seats while the BJD will contest at least two-thirds of the 147 Assembly seats. However, this would also mean ceding to the Congress the entire opposition space in the state. The BJD-BJP strategists believe the Congress lacks the leadership to mount a potent challenge in Odisha.

In 2019, the BJD and BJP cornered 20 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in a three-cornered fight. The BJD won 12 seats with a 43.32 per cent vote share, while the BJP won eight seats with a 38.88 per cent vote share. The Congress fared poorly, winning one seat with a vote share of 14 per cent.

The BJP's appeal among the voters of Odisha was significantly greater when the question was about electing the national government. In the Assembly polls, held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections, the BJD won 113 seats with a 44.71 per cent vote share, but the BJP secured only 23 seats with a 32.49 per cent vote share, and the Congress won nine seats with a 16.12 per cent vote share. It was the first time that the BJP displaced the Congress as the principal opposition party. The BJD and BJP, therefore, accounted for 92.5 per cent of the state's seats and 77.2 per cent of the vote share.

Patnaik floated the BJD in December 1997 as an offshoot of the Janata Dal. It allied with the BJP, and the two won most of Odisha's seats in the 1998 and 1999 Lok Sabha polls. Patnaik joined the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government as a member of the Union cabinet. The two parties formed a coalition government in Odisha in March 2000.

Nine years later, on March 7, 2009, the BJP parted ways with the BJD, with Patnaik upset about the communal riots in Kandhamal in August 2018. "Every bone in my body is secular," Patnaik declared. Ever since, the Patnaik-led BJD has swept all polls, from the panchayat to Parliament.

In the face of Patnaik's popularity, the BJP's challenge in Odisha became feeble over the years, and the Congress' became feebler. In 2014, the BJP predicted a "Modi tsunami" in Odisha, but the BJD won 20 of the 21 seats. The BJP won one seat.

In the run-up to the 2019 polls, BJP national president Amit Shah likened the Patnaik-led Odisha government to a "burnt transformer". A couple of weeks later, addressing a public meeting at Kendrapara, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the Odia people to accord a befitting farewell to their chief minister. It wasn't enough to sway the people of Odisha.

With elections done and dusted, Patnaik announced in June 2019 that the BJD would support former civil servant Ashwini Vaishnaw to get elected to the Rajya Sabha as a BJP candidate. Ever since, Patnaik and Modi have exhibited unmissable camaraderie in public. Neither has criticised the other, including during the PM's recent visits to Odisha. Since 2014, the BJD has supported the Centre at crucial junctures. It supported demonetisation, Article 370, and the Citizenship Amendment Act. Patnaik was the leading supporter of Droupadi Murmu as the presidential candidate.

On January 17, Patnaik inaugurated the Jagannath Puri heritage corridor, five days before the PM participated in the pran pratishtha ceremony at the Ram temple in Ayodhya. On February 3, at a public meeting at the Indian Institute of Management-Sambalpur, the PM described Patnaik as his good friend. At a BJP rally in the district later that day, noticeably enough, the PM neither criticised Patnaik nor the BJD government, training his guns instead on the Congress. On February 14, Patnaik issued his party's support for Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's Rajya Sabha candidature in the "larger interest" of Odisha's telecom sector and railways.

Modi visited Odisha on March 5, the anniversary of Patnaik's 24 years as chief minister and his father's birth anniversary. He described Patnaik as a "lokapriya (popular)" chief minister. He said Odisha will contribute significantly to achieving the National Democratic Alliance's target of winning 400 seats. Patnaik praised Modi for "setting a new direction for India."