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Congress faces a tough time in Orissa poll

M I Khan in Bhubaneswar

The heavyweights of the ruling Congress in Orissa, including Chief Minister Hemanand Biswal and pradesh Congress committee president and former chief minister J B Patnaik, are very worried.

Ahead lies possibly the toughest assembly election they've faced, and failure could put their own positions in jeopardy.

With the Biju Janata Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party combine on the ascendant, some senior ministers and two former chief ministers have already shown their unwillingness to contest this time. And a few senior politicians have opted for what they think are safe seats.

OPCC chief Patnaik has decided to change his constituency from Begunia in Khurda district to Athagarh in Cuttack district while Revenue Minister Jagannath Patnaik has moved to Kesinga in Kalahandi district.

Minister for Urban Development, Information and Public Relations Bhupinder Singh was given a ticket from Junagarh in Kalahandi at the last moment.

The chief minister, who is seeking re-election from Laikera in western Orissa, is likely to face a 'do-or-die' battle against the BJP's Brundaban Majhi. Biswal has won this seat five times in a row. This is the second time he will be contesting the seat as chief minister. The last time he had done so was a decade ago, when he was chief minister for four months. He won that election, but his party lost.

Biswal's strength lies in the fact that he nursed Laikera well in the early years. But his failure to do much for the people of Laikera in recent times, the gains the saffron brigade has made in the area, and the anti-incumbency factor make his position a little more vulnerable. This, despite the electorate consisting of more than 50 per cent SC and ST voters and 20 per cent OBC voters.

If Biswal's image and experience give him an edge over the BJP, the Congress's lack of touch with the grass roots and the alleged discrimination in old age and widow pension disbursement erodes some of it. "The slow implementation of the rural development programme in the last five years is another factor making people distance themselves from the party," says a close confidant of the chief minister. He says that even when Biswal was deputy chief minister, from 1995 to 1998, he paid little attention to developing infrastructure in his constituency.

The BJP nominee is a popular figure because he is more accessible. In the 1998 Lok Sabha election, he campaigned for senior BJP politician and Union minister Debendra Pradhan and worked as Pradhan's poll manager in the 1999 Lok Sabha election. This helped him establish contact with a large number of people, including party workers.

Biswal had lost the 1999 Lok Sabha election in Deogarh to Pradhan. Laikera forms part of Deogarh. The defeat indicated that the BJP has widened its support base in the area.

Now OPCC chief Patnaik's decision to contest from Begunia has also disheartened the party's rank and file. "Patnaik has chosen a safe seat because he was not sure about his prospects in Begunia," says a senior Congress politician who was a poll manager in the 1995 by-election wherein Patnaik won the seat.

During his four years as chief minister, Patnaik had neglected Begunia and not kept the promises he had made there. The people's resentment showed in the last two Lok Sabha elections where the opposition BJD-BJP candidates were ahead of the Congress in the constituency.

This time, the BJP has put up Oriya actor-turned-politician Prashant Nanda in Begunia. And that reportedly accounts for Patnaik's reluctance to contest the seat.

Nanda, a senior vice-president of the state BJP, often termed the 'Raj Kapoor' of the Oriya film industry, is very popular on the coastal belt. "The BJP decided to give Patnaik a tough fight in Begunia, but he ran away to save his own skin," says a senior BJP politician.

Patnaik isn't necessarily safe in Athagarh either, because the BJD has put up one of its most popular young leaders, Ranendra Pratap Swain, there. He is seeking re-election from the seat.

Other Congress heavyweights facing a difficult time are Jagannath Patnaik, Finance Minister Bhagwat Prasad Mohanty, and the powerful Water Resources Minister Basant Kumar Biswal.

Urban Development Minister Bhupinder Singh has moved from Kesinga seat to Junagarh, making way for Jagannath Patnaik, who had earlier contested Nuapada. Singh was the only Congress candidate to win the Kesinga assembly seat in Kalahandi. That was in the 1995 assembly election.

Jagannath Patnaik was denied a ticket then and he later contested, and won, a byelection from Nuapada. In recent years, the BJP has increased its vote percentage as well as its grip over the people in Kalahandi, as evidenced by the fact that B K Singhdeo won the last two Lok Sabha elections there by huge margins.

Basant Biswal, though, is seeking re-election from his stronghold, Tirtol, in Jagatsinghpur district in coastal Orissa. It would have been a safe seat, if it weren't for the fact that his younger son, the Congress candidate for the Jagatsinghpur Lok Sabha seat, was defeated and that people weren't happy with his handling of the situation after the cyclone in the district.

Truly, the Congress seems to be facing hard times now.

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