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The recent confusion in the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) over the split voting of the party’s Rajya Sabha members on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, has brought into sharper focus the inner struggles of the Naveen Patnaik-led party, which until recently ruled Odisha. However, it is pertinent to note that a similar issue - namely, leadership - ails some other regional parties as well, some of whose origins coincide closely with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managing to cobble together a coalition government for the first time at the Centre in 1998.
But first, a little history. The BJD, a breakaway faction of the Janata Dal, was officially launched on December 26, 1997, while the Trinamool Congress, which under Mamata Banerjee had split from the Congress, was founded on January 1, 1998. A year later, Sharad Pawar and some of his associates in the Congress floated the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on June 10, 1999, after leaving the Congress over Sonia Gandhi's leadership. Only a month later, former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda and some others, including current Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah, split from the JH Patel-led Janata Dal faction when the latter supported the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre. They formed the Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S), in July, 1999.
The trouble with BJD
The BJD failed to win any seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, but given its successive majorities in the state Assembly for five terms until the latest polls, which it lost, the BJD still has 7 Rajya Sabha MPs, with Sasmit Patra as its leader in the Upper House.
After the Odisha Assembly and Lok Sabha polls, Patnaik and the BJD became more vociferous in their opposition to the BJP and its so-called 'double-engine' governments in the state and at the Centre. The BJD had also criticised the Waqf (Amendment) Bill. But on Thursday, the day of the debate on the Bill in the Rajya Sabha, the party changed its stand.
Patra tweeted that the party has decided not to issue a whip, and left voting to the “conscience” of its individual MPs. In the event, three voted in favour of the Bill, three against, and one abstained. A faction in the party has now alleged that a 'deal' was struck with the BJP, and argued that the voting behaviour of the party MPs would hurt its secular image. A senior party leader has demanded that Patnaik take action against Patra, and has also gone public with questions over the role of former bureaucrat-turned-BJD leader VK Pandian in the party’s volte-face on the Waqf Bill.
On Monday, BJD Rajya Sabha MP Muzibulla Khan, who spoke against the Bill on the floor of the Rajya Sabha and proceeded to vote against it, met Patnaik with a Muslim delegation. Patnaik told them he had severed ties with the BJP without even caring about his government after the Kandhamal riots of 2008.
But the rumblings are not just against Pandian’s clout: leaders have also questioned Patnaik’s style of functioning. The former CM is already 78 and ailing, and it is possible that he may not continue in electoral politics by the time the next Odisha Assembly elections roll around. The fate of the BJD in the post-Naveen Patnaik years hangs in the balance, and the Waqf Bill has only exacerbated it.
A similar predicament faced the NCP until Ajit Pawar, the nephew of party fonder Sharad Pawar, split and aligned with the BJP and is now a Deputy CM in Maharashtra as part of the BJP-led Mahayuti government.
In the Trinamool Congress, Banerjee and her associates are preparing for next year’s Assembly polls in West Bengal. The party took a strong stand against the Waqf Bill. But at 70, Banerjee is arguably in the evening of her political life, but her nephew and heir-apparent Abhishek Banerjee is yet to win over the party’s senior leadership.
The fate of the Janata Dal (Secular), too, remains uncertain. It arrested its decline in the Lok Sabha polls by aligning with the BJP after a disastrous Karnataka Assembly polls in 2023. However, not everyone in the BJP is keen to keep the JD (S) on as an alliance partner by the time of the next Assembly polls in May 2028, given that Deve Gowda and his son HD Kumaraswamy have shown themselves in the past as driving a hard bargain.
The decline of at least the BJD and JDS could be good news for both the BJP and Congress in Odisha and Karnataka, respectively. As for who will fill the gap in the TMC and Bengal after Mamata Banerjee hangs up her boots remains an open question.
