You are seriously mistaken if you expect newly BJP State Unit President Kanak Vardhan Singhdeo to do wonders with a magic band, while reviving the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Odisha. The BJP, which is on the verge of extinction in Odisha, needs a leader who can reach out to the masses, not the leaders who keep themselves limited to AC rooms and need saviours like Naveen Patnaik to bail them out. The same things happened when the BJD-BJP alliance was in power. And, today the BJP is paying a heavy price for those leaders’ wrongdoings.
After the separation from the BJD, the fortune of BJP in Odisha has taken a heavy beating. That was evident from the 2009 Assembly and Lok Sabha polls and 2012 panchayat polls. BJP falls way behind the BJD and Congress in all districts of the state. Even a strong leader like MA Kharavela Swain had to leave the party and float an outfit on his own. People like Bijaya Mohapatra, who are intelligent and experienced, are hardly getting any opportunity to take the party in the right direction.
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While the stakes are down for the party in Odisha, the selection of K V Singhdeo is seen as a welcome step to unite the party. However, will it happen? KV Singhdeo is not a leader of the masses. He is a royal and won the elections on the basis of his reputation and influence. Now he has to prove before the central leadership that he can unite the party cadres and emerge as an alternative to a person of Naveen Patnaik’s stature.
Without any slight to Mr. KV Singhdeo, who definitely has good leadership qualities, it is wrong to say that he will change everything for the BJP in Odisha. BJP needs more groundwork to reach out to the common people and build the trust. The party needs to win the confidence of the people with hard efforts. In the present scenario, it needs a person like Atal Bihari Vajpayee again to see any miracle in Odisha.