Naveen Patnaik begins a new innings — this time in the Opposition

Former Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik is all set to begin his new innings — this time on the Opposition benches. On Wednesday, BJD’s legislature party elected him as the Leader of the Opposition after his party lost the state assembly polls to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

For Patnaik, a five-time CM who hasn’t lost a single election since his Lok Sabha debut in 1997, this marks a significant change — this is the first time since the BJD’s assembly debut in 2000 that the former CM will occupy the Opposition bench.

Along with him, the BJD also elected senior MLA Prasanna Acharya as the deputy leader of the legislature party. Former speaker Pramila Mallik will be the chief whip of the party while former minister Pratap Keshari Deb has been picked as its deputy chief whip.

“We have just had a meeting of the BJD MLAs, who have been elected in the recent elections. I congratulated them and thanked them. They have elected me as the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the BJD legislature party. We had a very thorough meeting with the MLAs today, where we discussed many matters including the recent elections,” Patnaik told reporters after the meeting.

His election as the Leader of Opposition comes amid widespread apprehension that the party could be on the verge of an existential crisis.

“We accept peoples’ mandate but it’s also a fact that the BJD is the number one party in terms of vote share as we secured 40.22 percent vote share against BJP’s 40.07 percent. We are confident that we will fight back and for that we need Patnaik to remain with us. Hence, it was the unanimous view of our MLAs that he (Patnaik) should be the Leader of Opposition,” a BJD leader told The Indian Express on the condition of anonymity.

A senior