Lack of “all-acceptable” face cripples grand-old party in Odisha

By Prasanna Mohanty

Bhubaneswar, March 22: The Congress in Odisha which has been struggling to regain its eminence in the state politics for nearly two decades is now at the crossroads as it is desperately lacking an “all-acceptable” leader to lead the party from the front.

Frequent defeats, mostly because of bitter internecine bickering, have decimated the party into a non-reckoning force. The party’s strengths in both state Assembly and Lok Sabha have worsened after every elections held since 2000.

With the grand old party biting the dust in the recently 2017 rural polls and the AICC leader in-charge of Odisha, BK Hariprasad once again failing to prove his worth in election management, the party now craves for a complete changeover to win back the trust of its traditional voters who have switched over their allegiance to the BJP.

The incumbent PCC chief Prasad Harichandan, though quite intelligent and a clean-image personality, – has not received the required support from his party leaders. He has been at daggers drawn with party’s senior leader and the Leader of the Opposition Narasingha Mishra on different issues, including Mahanadi water row with the neighbouring Chhattisgarh government and election management.

Besides, other senior leaders of the party like Niranjan Patnaik, Tara Prasad Bahinipati, Nabakishore Das, Chiranjibi Biswal have never appeared comfortable with the leadership of Mr Harichandan. On many occasions, – Tara Prasad Bahinipati has in public criticised the PCC chief for the party’s current sorry state of affairs.

Mr Harichandan’s predecessors such as Jayadev Jena, Niranjan Patnaik and Sarat Patnaik had also met similar fate as the over-ambitious factional leaders challenged their leadership and did not extend them support to fight the ruling BJD. Surprisingly enough, all these leaders had lost the top job just ahead of assembly elections by the All India Congress Committee (AICC). Every time the AICC leaders indulged in the change of guard gambling, the party paid heavy toll for it in terms of losing strength in the state Assembly.

In 1995, the Congress which came power defeating the Biju Patnaik led Janata Dal enjoyed an absolute majority in the Assembly by winning 80 of the 147 seats with a vote share of 39.08 per cent. However, in 2000, 2004, 2009 and 2014, its seat tallies went down respectively to 26, 38, 27 and 16.

The 2014 elections saw, Congress’s vote share dipping to an all time low of 25.7 per cent.