Bhubaneswar: Terming each other "betrayer", the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which fought the last three Lok Sabha elections in Orissa on a 12:9 seat sharing formula together, will now enter the battle for ballot in the coming elections as friend-turned-foe much to the advantage of the Congress which was marginalised in both the 1999 and 2004 elections.
With the Assembly and the Lok Sabha elections just a month away, the BJD and BJP have started accusing each other of breaking the alliance.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik made it a point in his election campaign to say that the BJP took just 11 minutes to break the 11-year-long alliance while the BJP staged a massive rally in Bhubaneshwar describing the Chief Minister as a great "betrayer" for breaking the alliance unilaterally.
Political pundits argued that the collapse of alliance between the BJD and the BJP, just on the eve of elections in the state, was bound to upset all poll calculation and lead to a new political polarisation in the state.
The last two Lok Sabha elections in the state witnessed a virtually straight contest between the BJD-BJP combine on one hand and the Congress on the other, in which the former had swept the polls bagging 19 of the total 21 seats in 1999 elections and 18 in 2004.
But with the coalition being snapped following the failure of seat sharing, the 2009 Lok Sabha elections will now witness mostly a triangular contest among the BJD, BJP and Congress, making it most difficult both for the BJP and also the ruling BJD to retain their supremacy.
While the Congress and the BJP have decided to go it alone for the Lok Sabha elections, the BJD has roped in new partners, the Left parties, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) to face the polls, although seat sharing with the new political partners was yet to be taken up.
Patnaik has ruled out any pre-poll alliance with these parties but maintained that BJD would enter into seat sharing for the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.
The BJD has also kept everybody guessing on its joining of the Third Front while entering into a seat sharing arrangement with the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) partners such as the NCP and the JMM in the state.
During the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the BJD-BJP fought the poll battle on 12:9 seat sharing basis and bagged 18 of the total 21 seats (BJD-11, BJP-7) while the Congress won two seats leaving the JMM to win Mayurbhanj (ST) seat.
There was, however, a marked decline of votes polled by the BJD-BJP combine in the last Lok Sabha elections compared to the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. The two coalition partners secured 57 per cent votes in the 1999 elections which reduced to 49.32 in the 2004 elections.
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On the other hand, the Congress retained the two seats in 2004 Lok Sabha elections but managed to corner 40.43 per cent votes, almost a rise of four per cent votes in its kitty compared to the previous elections.
Orissa will go the polls in the first and second phases on April 16 and 23.
Barring BJP which has so far declared candidates in seven of the 21 Lok Sabha seats, the other two major political parties, the Congress and the BJD have not yet released the names.
The Congress has of course completed the process of screening the names of the candidates in all the 21 seats and sent them to the High Command for its approval. The BJD is yet to finalise the list.
In view of the breaking of alliance, both the BJD and the BJP this time would find it a tough task to select the candidates and ensure their winning in Lok Sabha seats where during last three General Elections they had hardly taken any initiative to strengthen the party's vote base.
While the BJP has to find new faces in 12 Lok Sabha seats contested by BJD since 1998 elections, the BJD would do a similar exercise in nine Lok Sabha seats fought by the BJP since 1998.
Out of the seven Lok Sabha seats announced by the BJP, six sitting MPs have been allowed to contest the election and in Mayurbhanj (ST) seat which went to JMM last time, the party has fielded former Minister and sitting MLA Droupadi Murmu.
For the BJD it will be again a tough task to find out suitable candidates for seven Lok Sabha seats held by the BJP and the Aska Lok Sabha seat, where sitting MP Harihar Swain has been expelled from the party for supporting the trust vote motion of the Manmohan Singh government. Swain had recently joined the Congress.
The ruling BJD was yet to decide as to how many Lok Sabha seats it would contest and what would be the seat sharing formula with the JMM, NCP, CPI and CPI-M which have extended their support to the trust vote moved by Patnaik to prove his majority in the Assembly on March 11.
While the JMM has been demanding four Lok Sabha seats, the CPI and CPI-M each has also been asking for three to four Lok Sabha seats and so also the NCP making it a very difficult to concede on the part of the BJD if it decided to field all 11 sitting MPs from their respective seats.
Delimitation has also brought some minor changes in the composition of the Lok Sabha seats in the state. Deogarh held by BJP MP Dharmendra Pradhan has been abolished while a new Lok Sabha seat called Baragarh in western Orissa has been formed.
So also the Phulbani (SC) seat won by BJD MP Sugrib Singh has been abolished but converted into Kandhmal general seat.
Jagatsinghpur held by BJD MP Brahmananda Panda has been changed from general to reserved seat for Scheduled Caste candidate.
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Among the major issues to dominate the poll scene, the supply of cheap rice at Rs 2 per kg would be the central focus on which the three major political parties have made their strategies to woo the voters.
The Congress has been releasing advertisements in the newspaper taking the credit for the supply of rice at Rs 2 per kg to the BPL families on the ground that the UPA government has been releasing subsidy to the tune of Rs 11 per kg of rice while the BJD government provides only a mere Rs 2 subsidy per kg.
Both the Congress and the BJP have promised that if voted to power in the Assembly elections, they would distribute rice at Rs1 per kg to the poor people.
The Congress has said it will expose the Naveen Patnaik government's incapability to utilise the central funds and decided to convince the voters that whatever development they have witnessed in the state was due to the efforts of the UPA government.
On the other hand, the ruling BJD would focus on what they called the "step motherly" attitude of the Centre, be it in case of releasing assistance to meet the natural calamities or fund for development of railways in the state besides non revision of the royalty on some major minerals.
The BJP, party sources said, would come out with statistics on how the state had benefitted during the Nationalist Democratic Alliance regime led by former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
In a bid to garner the anti-Congress vote, the BJP was also contemplating to convince the voters that the Congress and the BJD had some hidden agenda as evident from the stoic silence of the UPA government to act when the Naveen Patnaik government was reduced to a minority following their withdrawal from the ministry on March 7 .
In the backdrop of the disastrous performance during the last two Lok Sabha elections under the leadership of former chief minister JB Pattnaik and PCC chief Jayedev Jena, the Congress High Command this time has revamped the state Congress to give it a new look before the voters.
It brought former Union minister KP Singh Deo at the helm of affairs of the Pradesh Congress Committee replacing Jena and asked Leader of Opposition JB Pattnaik to step down appointing in his place tribal leader Ulaka Ramchandra.
For the first time to boost the morale of the youths in the party two young leaders - former Union minister Bhakta Charan Das and Congress MLA LB Mohapatra were appointed as working presidents along with Union Minister of State for Rural Development Chandra Sekhar Sahoo. This apart, former Union minister Srikant Jena was made campaign committee chairman.
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