THE WINNING HABIT

A strange sort of veneration confronts you when you mention Naveen Patnaik in Odisha. Biju Janata Dal MP Amar Patnaik gets a little emotional when he says, “He is like family: a grandfather to children, father to many, brother to women.”

- Romita Datta

It perhaps explains the 75-year-old BJD patriarch’s uninterrupted run in the state for the past 22 years. Be it parliamentary elections or for assembly, municipal or even rural bodies, his party sweeps them all with mandates so comprehensive that other parties seem like extras in some Naveen Patnaik show.

So it was with the latest panchayat elections (held from February 16-24), where the BJD won 766 of the 851 zilla parishad zones, while the BJP and Congress managed inconsequential tallies of 42 and 37 seats, respectively. While the Congress did retain 60 per cent of the seats it won last time, the BJP saw a massive erosion of its base in the Mayurbhanj, Malkangiri and Kalahandi areas, with its tally plunging from the 297 seats won in the 2017 panchayat poll.