Mr. VK Pandian, who has consistently downplayed speculation about being a chief minister-in-waiting, has also become a target of derision from Amit Shah. Shah, whose party is making an all-out effort to win over voters in Tamil Nadu—a state where the BJP has traditionally struggled—mockingly referred to Pandian as a “Tamil babu.”
“Naveen Babu has made a Tamil officer ruler. Oust the BJD and we will give you a young Odia-speaking Chief Minister. Babus have looted the state,” Shah declared last week. “If the BJP is voted to power, a bhumiputra (son of the soil) will rule, not a Tamil babu.”
Chief Minister Patnaik has dismissed these attacks. Last Friday, he accused the BJP of spreading falsehoods, emphasizing that he has been actively campaigning across the state for the past month. “There is a limit to the lies the BJP can tell. As you can see, I am in very good health,” he told news agency ANI.
On Tuesday, after a video surfaced showing Mr. Pandian covering Patnaik’s hand, the BJD leader criticized the BJP for turning “non-issues into issues.” “This will certainly not work,” he asserted.
Prime Minister Modi’s attacks are part of the BJP’s intensified efforts to unseat the ruling BJD and secure its first-ever Assembly election victory in Odisha, while also aiming to capture as many of the state’s Lok Sabha seats as possible. The BJP has never governed Odisha, a state that has alternated between the BJD and the Congress. Patnaik has been Chief Minister since March 2000.
On the Lok Sabha front, the BJP is pushing hard, despite competition from the Congress-led INDIA bloc, towards its goal of ‘abki baar, 400 paar’ and securing a third consecutive term at the center. In the 2019 elections, the BJD won 12 out of 21 Lok Sabha seats, a decrease of eight seats from the previous election, while the BJP secured eight seats and saw a substantial 16.9 percent increase in vote share.
The BJP’s focus on Mr. Pandian suggests they view him as a significant threat, potentially even more so than Chief Minister Patnaik. While Modi and other BJP leaders have accused Patnaik of failing to develop the state over the past 24 years, their specific and targeted attacks on Pandian indicate they see him as a key player in Odisha’s political landscape.