The Nirvik Bureau, Bhubaneswar, 31 October 2022
The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has an enviable record in winning elections, especially byelections. Since 2019, the party has not lost a single bypoll. However, the Dhamnagar bypoll has assumed interesting dimensions. A straight fight between the BJD and the BJP would have perhaps been easier to predict, as the Congress has not been a real contender in most byelections. But the presence of the BJD dissident candidate, Rajendra Kumar Das, as an independent has queered the pitch for the BJD. It might still win the battle of the ballot but has to counter two sympathy-backed candidates, instead of one, to do so. When deceased BJP MLA Bishnu Charan Sethi’s son, Suryavanshi Suraj, entered the poll arena with the hope of garnering sympathy votes, BJD was confident of overcoming the sympathy factor and winning by 30,000 votes. But a parallel sympathy factor got created when local favourite, Rajendra Kumar Das, was denied the BJD ticket. His independent candidature could garner a sizeable chunk of votes that would have otherwise fallen in BJD’s lap. He has managed to get the sympathy of his followers by playing the victim card, writing a tear-soaked letter, and naming his family and constituents as his star campaigners.
The important question is why did the BJD decide upon a new candidate in Abanti Das? What was the thinking and what were the political calculations? Our take is that the BJD is treating the Dhamnagar bypoll as a laboratory for the 2024 general elections by experimenting with a woman candidate with Mission Shakti credentials. If she wins, the experiment becomes a masterstroke, and the party can then confidently roll out Naveen babu’s dream of handing out 33% of the tickets to women candidates in the 2024 Assembly polls. Remember, Naveen babu had already walked the talk by giving tickets to 7 women out of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 general elections. He is the only party chief in the country who provided tickets to 33% women. If other parties follow his example, then we would not need a law to increase the number of women legislators in our Parliament and Assemblies.
Naveen babu’s commitment to women’s empowerment is not in doubt. He has inherited this legacy from his legendary father. Remember, when the entire political class in the country was still trying to reconcile to the 73rd and 74th Constitutional amendments for local self-governance in the early 1990s, Biju babu boldly announced a 33% reservation of Panchayat and Zilla Parishad seats for women.
The BJD and Naveen Patnaik have already captured the imagination of rural women in Odisha through Mission Shakti that has economically empowered the latter. The next step is to politically empower them. While women, especially those in self help groups (SHGs) under Mission Shakti, have been given political space in the Panchayati Raj Institutions, the BJD wants to provide them space in our Parliament and Assembly. A win in Dhamnagar could hasten this process and 49 women could be given tickets for the 2024 Assembly polls. It would be surprising if half of them is not from the Mission Shakti stable. We are already hearing murmurs within the BJD that Naveen babu’s successor could be a lady bureaucrat who has helmed the Mission Shakti programme for many years. Even Naveen babu in a recent interview to “The Week” confirmed that his successor had been identified. If Odisha is indeed going to get its second woman CM after almost 50 years, what better way for the BJD to do that than by becoming the only political party in the country that provides 33% of its tickets to women for both the Parliamentary and the Assembly polls? Naveen babu is already seen in Odisha and across the country as a leader with a difference and the successful realisation of his dream to politically empower women, would catapult him to a higher orbit.
However, if Abanti Das loses the Dhamnagar battle, the move to field her could prove to be a costly misadventure in more ways than one. Firstly, Naveen babu’s dream of fielding 49 women in the 2024 Assembly elections could just remain a dream. Secondly, the dissidence and disgruntlement within the BJD could widen and deepen, which might adversely affect its performance in 2024.
