It’s finally official that the BJP will go solo in Odisha, both in Lok Sabha as well as assembly elections. The BJP-BJD Lok Sabha deal was almost sealed, apart from a few sticking points like Bhubaneswar and Puri seats. However, it was the BJP state unit’s continuous demand to renegotiate the assembly seat-sharing pact that became a hindrance.
While a pact was reached where the BJP would fight from 47 seats and the BJD from 100, the state BJP was adamant that they renegotiate to a formula when the two were in alliance in the past. Though the BJP initially asked them to be patient, the top brass had to listen to the state leadership, seeing the upward trend in its favour in surveys that the saffron party has been commissioning in Odisha since last October.
SURVEY NUMBERS SPARKED SEAT-SHARING RETHINK
News18 has learnt that at least four surveys have been conducted so far. The first survey in the autumn of 2023 showed BJP would win just eight seats in Lok Sabha and 32 seats in the assembly election in Odisha if they went solo. Since then, there have been at least three more surveys which show a gradual upward trend in favour of the saffron party.
Sources say, according to the latest survey, BJP would win 17 seats in Lok Sabha and a whopping 70 assembly seats if it decided to fight solo.
According to BJP’s seat-sharing talks with the BJD, both parties agreed that the BJP will fight from 14 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state and 47 of the 147 assembly seats. While BJP realised it could win more seats than it’s allowed in Lok Sabha, the deal-breaker turned out to be a 100-47 seat-sharing pact for the assembly poll.
“It wouldn’t be prudent to fight from 47 seats when the BJP is slated to win 70 seats on its own,” said a party source.
It was then that the arguments of BJP state president Manmohan Samal and vice-president Prithviraj Haricharan started making sense to the BJP’s top leadership. However, the BJD would not go back to the negotiating table after a pact had already been reached “in principle” between the two parties.
WERE BHUBANESWAR, PURI IRONED OUT?
While the seat-sharing pact of Lok Sabha was not much of a sticking point, Bhubaneswar and Puri seats were the real hurdle. BJP’s Aparajita Sarangi won the Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha seat in 2019. Sources say BJD agreed to let it go after Naveen Patnaik rushed his closest aides VK Pandian and Pranab Prakash Das to Delhi on March 7 on a chartered flight for a negotiation with Amit Shah. The next day, a message was communicated from BJD that the BJP could retain Bhubaneswar, say sources.
“The only sticking point in the Lok Sabha poll remained the Puri seat which we lost last time by a narrow margin of 11,714 votes. But the BJD wasn’t ready to let go of Puri. The deal-breaker was the assembly seat-sharing deal which was not in the BJP’s best interest. For the BJD, re-negotiation was out of the question. For us, we no longer wanted to fight from just 47 seats. So that’s when we decided to go solo,” said the BJP source.
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