Odisha: BJD-BJP talks hit Assembly polls stalemate, BJD wants lion’s share

The seat-sharing talks between the BJD and BJP continue to hang, with sources talking of hard bargaining on both sides, especially over Assembly seats, with the state seeing simultaneous elections along with the Lok Sabha.

The Naveen Patnaik-led BJD reportedly does not want anything less than 100 of the total 147 Assembly seats. For the Lok Sabha, there is an overall agreement that the BJP will contest as much as two-third of the seats.

Senior BJD leaders V K Pandian and Pranab Prakash Das, who had flown to Delhi earlier this week for the seat-sharing talks, returned to Bhubaneswar Friday. BJP Odisha leaders, including state unit president Manmohan Samal, who were earlier asked not to leave Delhi by the party, also landed in the state in the evening.

Sources said that Odisha BJP leaders are not agreeable to the BJD claiming the lion’s share of the Assembly seats, and instead want the same arrangement as existed between the two parties in 2000-09, when the BJD-BJP share was 84-63, respectively.

State BJP leaders, who have been taking on the BJD as the main opposition in Odisha, are trying to persuade the central leaders that there is strong anti-incumbency against the ruling state party on the ground, and that the BJP would do well even on its own. Hence, they argue, first contesting in an alliance and then agreeing to less than 50 Assembly seats would not fare well for the party.

Speaking to reporters after landing in Bhubaneswar, Samal claimed there had been no discussion on an alliance at all, and that the BJP
“would fight on its own”. “We had gone to Delhi to discuss our election strategy with the top leadership. The meeting was to discuss preparations for forming a government at the Centre as well as in Odisha,” the state