Caste politics looms large in Odisha Premium

The BJD, which resisted wading into caste politics, has taken a plunge now

The Biju Janata Dal, led by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, last week won the Padampur byelection, dubbed a crucial poll before the 2024 elections, by a huge margin than anticipated.

While both the BJD and BJP had approached the election with innumerable public meetings and door-to-door campaigning, what made the bypoll different from the previous elections in the State was the parties’ attempts to win the trust of different castes and communities.

At the peak of the campaign, Mr. Patnaik sanctioned two valuable pieces of land at Puri and Bhubaneswar, and ₹3 crore each for the construction of guesthouses, for peasant and weaver communities having sizeable vote bases in Padampur.

Stakes were so high for the bypoll that the five-time Chief Minister and one of the country’s tallest regional leaders had apparently resorted to appeasing castes.

In the last two decades, Mr. Patnaik has largely managed to keep his head above the water in electoral politics through a plethora of welfare measures and some smart election management.

Though the BJD candidate Barsha Singh Bariha won the poll by over 42,000 votes, political analysts believe the Odisha Chief Minister might have triggered a ferment in the State’s political landscape where social justice movement (caste-led politics) had never found echo.

In the run-up to the polls, the ruling party was said to have failed to gauge the mood of two communities — Kultas and Mehers — who comprise 15% and 4% of the Padampur population respectively.