As Patnaik vows ‘no more support to BJP’, a brief history of BJD backing for Modi govt in 10 years

The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has announced that it would stop giving “issue-based support” to the BJP in Parliament. BJD chief and ex-Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik held a meeting with his party’s nine Rajya Sabha MPs on Monday, asking them to ensure that the party goes all out to “protect the interests of Odisha” and emerges as a “strong and vibrant” Opposition in Parliament.

The BJD has nine MPs in the Upper House, even as it failed to win any Lok Sabha seat out of the state’s 21 seats in the recent elections, which is a first for the party since its formation in 1997.

According to the BJD camp, Patnaik’s message to his Rajya Sabha MPs was: “No more support to BJP, only opposition”. This is a marked shift from the party’s stand in the last 10 years.

During the first two terms of the Narendra Modi-led government during 2014-24, the BJD had come to its rescue in Parliament and outside on a range of issues multiple times.

Be it the Presidential elections in 2017 and 2022 or the passage of crucial legislations in the Rajya Sabha, where the BJP lacks the majority, the Patnaik-led party threw its weight behind the BJP dispensation. It earned the tag of being a “trusted ally of BJP” in the process despite not being formally part of the BJP-led NDA.

The BJD and the BJP even made attempts to form an alliance for the recent simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in Odisha. That did not materialise, while the election results saw the BJP storming to power in the state, ending the five-term reign of the BJD. The BJP also won 19 Lok Sabha seats.

Presidential elections in 2017, 2022

A phone call from PM Modi to then Odisha CM Patnaik ensured that the BJD supported the NDA’s presidential candidate Ram Nath Kovind in the 2017