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Helped by intense infighting and weak leadership in the state Congress unit, the main challenger to ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha, chief minister Naveen Patnaik would have been expecting a cakewalk for his shot at the fourth consecutive term in the coming elections. But the prospect of a rise in BJP vote share in the state, riding on Modi wave, has emerged as a cause of worry for him.
“Patnaik does not see much of a threat from the faction-ridden state unit of Congress, whose fortunes seem to be on a slide at the national level. It is the projection of BJP increasing its vote share in various surveys which is a worry for him”, says a senior BJD leader.
The ruling party is particularly perturbed over the sway that BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi holds over the young, new and floating voters, who were mostly with BJD in the state during the last three elections. So any rise in the BJP’s vote share will hurt BJD more than the Congress, which has traditional vote bank in the state.
“Because of BJP’s low support base in Odisha, a moderate vote swing in its favour may not have much of an impact in terms of seat gains, but it may help the Congress by cutting into BJD’s vote share in some crucial seats where there is keen three corner contest”, the BJD leader pointed out.
That the Congress has a traditional support base in Odisha is proved from the fact that in the last three general elections in the state (2000, 2004, 2009), the vote share of the party has hovered around 30 per cent though it has been out of power for last 15 years.
In the last general election (2009), the party won 6 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats and 26 of the 147 assembly seats at stake.
In contrast, BJD which had 39 per cent vote share, was victorious in 14 Lok Sabha seats and 103 assembly seats and BJP with 15 per cent vote share had drawn blank in the Lok Sabha poll and bagged only 6 assembly seats.
Buoyed by massive attendance in Modi’s rally (about 1.5 lakh people) earlier this month, the BJD state unit projects a rise in its vote share in the range of 5 to 10 per cent. Even a survey conducted by Lokniti-IBN has predicted 8 per cent swing in favour of BJP in Odisha in the coming election.
Analysts point out that going by the lower end of the projected increase in BJP’s vote share at 5 per cent, a major chunk of this will come from slashing into the BJD’s share.
To emphasise the point, they said, in the last general election, at all the six seats which went to Congress, the BJP candidates had polled significant number of votes (between 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh votes) spoiling the chances of BJD.
This kind of scenario may be witnessed in more number of seats this time because of the Modi euphoria and particularly his sway over the young voters.
