‘A BJD-BJP alliance would have been immoral. Nowhere in a democracy do ruling party and Opposition ally just before polls’: Senior BJD-turned-BJP leader

Biju Janata Dal (BJD) veteran and six-time MP Bhartruhari Mahtab has quit the party and joined the BJP. In his resignation letter, Mahtab, who has been representing the Cuttack seat since 1998, said “things had changed” in the functioning of the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD and that he had been “criticised’ for “raising his voice”.

In an interview with The Indian Express, Mahtab says he felt “suffocated” within the BJD, alleging that the party is now unilaterally run by V K Pandian, Patnaik’s long-time private secretary who joined the party last November. Excerpts:

You were one of the BJD’s founding leaders. Why did you quit the party?

The BJD has undergone a lot of change in the last 27-28 years. It is being controlled by one person and is no longer a political party. It was very difficult to function in the party over the last 4-5 years. I felt suffocated.

A party functions when one is encouraged to give a different point of view. Odisha Chief Minister and BJD chief Naveen (Patnaik) babu had the attitude of listening to various perspectives. However, that vanished after 2019.

Those with different points of view were humiliated publicly and asked to toe one line. I resisted this approach, tried to correct it…There was no point continuing in the party that had no scope for change.

The second aspect of why I chose to leave is the amount of corruption at different levels. It (corruption) was not only at a money level but also in behaviour…

The BJD had come into existence in 1997 and got the mandate repeatedly till 2014. This was because a large number of leaders of the party, including Naveen Patnaik, were considered different from other politicians. However, now, the BJD has become the Congress of the 1980s and 90s — exactly what it