The coming of age of Naveen Patnaik, the politician

By Sandeep Sahu Bhubaneswar: When Naveen Patnaik sat down to finalise the list of ministers to be inducted—and sacked—in the biggest-ever rejig of his council of ministers on 2 August, it was the first time in his 12 years as chief minister of Odisha that he did not have the services of Pyari Mohan Mohapatra—his Man Friday till the other day and Enemy No 1 today—to aid and advise him in the exercise. The invisible hand of Mohapatra has been widely suspected of having choreographed the formation, expansion and reshuffle of the Naveen Patnaik ministry every single time since he became chief minister for the first time in 2000. But this time, Patnaik not only had to do without the services of his erstwhile mentor but had the rather onerous task of weeding out the latter’s closet loyalists from his council of ministers.[caption id=“attachment_407831” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Smart moves. Image courtesy PIB[/caption] In the little over two months since Mohapatra’s coup bid failed on 29 May this year, it has become abundantly clear that things will never be the same again in the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). Ruling party leaders who made a beeline to Mohapatra’s Shaheed Nagar residence in Bhubaneswar hoping to get an audience with him now dread the prospect of running into him even on social occasions. The spotlight is truly on the real and imagined supporters of the man who ran the party—and many say the government—like his fiefdom for years. The shadow of the abortive coup loomed large over the latest expansion cum reshuffle of the Naveen Patnaik council of ministers. Those who came in did not matter as much as those who were shown the door. Having sacked three known acolytes of Mohapatra—Women and Child Development Minister Anjali Behera, Urban Development Minister Sarada Nayak and Commerce and Transport Minister Sanjib Sahoo—immediately after the dethronement bid, Patnaik wielded the axe on five more in the 2 August reshuffle. The biggest—and one must say the most surprising—casualty was finance minister and the No 2 in the cabinet Prafulla Ghadai, who had set an enviable record as the man who had presented nine consecutive budgets only this March. By all accounts, Ghadai was at the forefront of the ‘Save Naveen’ salvage operation on the night the alleged coup was playing out first at Mohapatra’s residence and then at a posh hotel in the city. Together with Damodar Rout , Mohapatra’s bête noire in the BJD who returned to the Naveen Patnaik cabinet as health and family welfare minister on 2 August, Ghadai was holding fort at Naveen Nivas keeping tabs on MLAs, advising them against joining the dissident camp and wooing them back into the fold as Naveen was fidgeting in far away in London. The unceremonious dumping of Ghadai suggests that stories about him playing ‘Heads I win, Tails you lose’ were not idle gossip after all. Grapevine had it that the finance minister had been promised the chief ministership by the Pyari camp while Mohapatra would continue doing what he knows and does best: backseat driving. Ghadai now says the chief minister’s mind has been ‘poisoned’ against him by some of his detractors in the party. Though Energy Minister Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak has long been known as a Pyari Mohan loyalist, his sacking was also a bit of a surprise. When Nayak survived the purge in the immediate aftermath of the coup attempt, many thought it was Naveen’s way of splitting the dissident ranks. By weaning away and co-opting some of the leading lights of the Pyari camp, went the reasoning, the BJD boss had gone one up on his former margadarshak. But Naveen proved that he is one up on all those who claim to have a hotline to his mind. In many ways, the post-coup period has seen the coming of age of Naveen the politician. The presidential election was the first major challenge that he faced after that fateful 29 May night. Coming as it did barely a month and a half after the earthquake in the party, keeping his flock together in the 19 July election was not an easy task by any stretch of imagination. Talk of cross-voting by closet loyalists of Pyari was thick in the air. But Naveen ensured that not a single MLA—including the two MLAs suspended from the party for their role in the coup bid—voted against the BJD nominated candidate PA Sangma, though Choudwar-Cuttack MLA Pravat Biswal did create a flutter when he showed his ballot paper to the returning officer forcing the latter to reject his vote. Having passed his first real test with flying colours, Naveen now embarked on an exercise to remove Pyari loyalists from key positions. He first sacked the heads of four important corporations and soon followed it up by sacking 24 heads of cooperative bodies – most of them handpicked by the man who has now become persona non grata. BJD sources say next in line are Mohapatra loyalists ensconced in key positions in the district units of the party. While Mohapatra supporters are a hounded lot, the average party has never it so good. He now access to Naveen Nivas, the chief minister’s residence and—for all practical purposes—the party headquarters, something he could not think of a few months ago. Having burnt his fingers with his erstwhile ‘Uncle’ who turned beimaan, Naveen is now wary of outsourcing the job of managing the party affairs to anybody. More than a decade after handing over the reins of the party to the bureaucrat-turned politician, Naveen is now determined to wrest back control and stamp his authority in the party apparatus. So far, he has succeeded to a large extent. But as they say, tomorrow could be a different ball game altogether.