Amit Shah serves a dampener to Odisha BJP: Anti-Naveen war cry ends in a whimper

It was billed the ‘Mahasangram’ rally, the event that was purported to mark the ‘beginning of the end’ of the Naveen Patnaik government in Odisha. For close to a fortnight in the lead up to the rally last Tuesday, BJP leaders had gone to town shouting from the rooftops that Naveen was spending sleepless nights thinking about how BJP president Amit Shah is going to beat the living daylights out of the beleaguered Odisha chief minister. But by the end of the rally, it was Naveen who was flashing the victory sign and not the other side. Even as other leaders lambasted Naveen Patnaik on the series of scams that have taken place in his 14-year rule, the BJP ‘master strategist’ refused to utter a word against him, leaving those who spoke before him looking silly. Old BJP hands recalled the alliance days when state leaders would present a litany of complaints against the BJD supremo, only to be rebuffed by the party’s central leadership – every single time. For the record, the BJP president did talk of the poor developmental record of the 14-year-old BJD government: electricity in only 43 per cent of homes, clean drinking water in 14 percent, toilets in 22 percent of homes, 46 percent of the population below the poverty line and other such ‘unsexy’ stuff. There was not a word about the chit fund scam, which indeed is giving sleepless nights to Naveen Patnaik government despite his resounding victory in the elections just seven months ago. There was no mention either of the massive land scam, which appears to have implicated the virtual Who’s Who of the government from the chief minister downwards or the much bigger – and longer – mining scam, which could well go the chit fund scam way and be probed by the CBI under Supreme Court orders. In short, Shah stayed scrupulously clear of saying anything that would cause discomfiture to Naveen. [caption id=“attachment_2040525” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. PTI[/caption] Now contrast this with how he dealt with Mamata Banerjee in his Kolkata rally on November 30. The BJP president was at his combative best taking on the fiery West Bengal chief minister in her den and hitting her where it hurt the most by raking up the alleged links between the chit fund scam and acts of Islamic terror in the state. The contrast with the tone and tenor of that speech and the one at the Unit VI ground in Bhubaneswar could not have been starker. No wonder, most state BJP leaders were seen scurrying for cover after the meeting. “What started as the ‘Mahasangram’ ended up being a ‘Mahasamarthan’,” AICC general secretary in charge of Odisha BK Hariprasad commented sarcastically. Any suggestion that this refusal to put Naveen on the mat could have been inadvertent was firmly laid to rest by Shah himself at the press conference he addressed in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday. Visibly irritated at the persistent questioning by the media about his refusal to speak against Naveen at the rally, he said; “I did criticise the development record of the Naveen Patnaik government. But if you want me to criticise him personally, I would request you to leave that decision to me. I would speak when the time comes.” Perhaps aware of the embarrassment he had caused to the party’s state leaders the day before, the BJP president said everything that was said in his presence had his sanction and the party was fully behind the state unit’s ‘Mahasangram’ campaign. “We will take it to its logical conclusion,” he said. Shah’s rather pusillanimous approach to Naveen is being interpreted in two ways. One school of thought believes the wily Gujarati was only being pragmatic. Knowing the state of the party organisation and the fractious state leadership in the state, he considered it foolhardy to take on Naveen at a time when the next elections are more than four years away. A section of the state unit also subscribes to this school of thought. But the theory that has more credence hints at some kind of a deal – or a truce at the very least – between the two estranged partners. And there are sound reasons to back this theory. For one thing, the Narendra Modi government, hopelessly short of numbers as it is in the Rajya Sabha, needs all the support it can muster to see that some of its crucial legislations scrape through the Upper House. For another, the result of the Kandhamal Lok Sabha bypoll in October last year has proved that Naveen Patnaik’s popularity, especially in the rural areas, is largely intact notwithstanding the damaging revelations about the acts of omission and commission of his government in facilitating, nurturing and protecting a host of scams. Having realised this, the BJP central leadership does not want to go too hard against him at this stage lest it could boomerang, goes the reasoning. While the BJP’s willingness to keep Naveen Patnaik in good humour could be a matter of conjecture, there is absolutely no doubt that the BJD boss is dying to enter into a deal with his long separated partner. One only has to recall his unprecedented decision to take all his 27 MPs – 20 newly elected MPs from the Lok Sabha and seven from the Rajya Sabha – along for his first meeting with Modi shortly after his swearing in. The man, who never tired of complaining about ‘central neglect’ during the UPA days, appears to have been rendered speechless after Modi became Prime Minister. When he does find his voice once in a while, it is to praise one Modi initiative or the other. On its part, the Modi government too has given indications that it is willing to address Naveen’s concerns, most notably in the matter of the appointment of the CBI Director. The fact that Odisha cadre IPS officer Prakash Mishra, who was the clear front runner to succeed the disgraced Ranjit Sinha, lost out in the end has been attributed largely to the machinations of Naveen Patnaik, who has no love lost with the former DGP. The institution of a flimsy vigilance case against Mishra in a 2006-09 matter barely weeks before the decision on the new CBI chief was to be taken was an unvarnished attempt by Naveen to scuttle his chances since he feared, rightly or mistakenly, that Mishra would go after the government with a vengeance in the chit fund scam probe. That the Modi government fell for Naveen’s entreaties suggests that there could be much more than meets the eye.