BHUBANESWAR: Even as scrutiny of nomination papers is over and the final list of candidates is set to be published on Tuesday, the ruling BJD finds itself in a tough spot in Nabarangpur district due to acute factionalism among its cadres.
The performance of BJD in the southern districts of Nabarangpur and Malkangiri was not as per expectations in the last panchayat elections. Despite this, the ruling party has not yet initiated efforts to improve its performance in the two districts. The problem in the Nabarangpur BJD is the presence of two heavyweights and their parallel campaign for the party.
Former Congress MP Pradeep Majhi had joined BJD in November last year and was made the outfit’s senior general secretary ahead of the panchayat elections. He was also made the party’s panchayat election in-charge of Nabarangpur and Malkangiri districts. However, Pradeep’s growing stature in the district BJD has rankled Nabarangpur MP and district president Ramesh Majhi.
Ramesh is an old hand of BJD and both the Majhis have started functioning independently of each other. The question is will the gamble played by the ruling BJD by giving more importance to Pradeep succeed in improving its performance. The issue is that though Pradeep has been rehabilitated in BJD with a senior post, his followers, most of whom are former Congressmen, are yet to be fully accepted by the local leaders of the regional party.
However, both the leaders denied that there is any difference between them and said there is no factionalism in the party. “There is total cooperation between the two of us and we are campaigning together,” Ramesh said and added that BJD will form zilla parishads in Nabarangpur and Malkangiri.
Pradeep also said that he has no difference with Ramesh. “BJD will improve its performance in both the districts,” he said and added that the party is focusing on schemes launched by the State government for all sections of people. “The talk about my differences with Ramesh is rumour,” he stated.
On the other hand, the BJP claimed that the party will form zilla parishads in both the districts. People are deprived of even basic necessities and corruption is rampant everywhere, former BJD MP, who joined BJP in March, 2019, Balabhadra Majhi said. People have started asking questions about the performance of Pradeep who was an MP, he said and added that the BJD will not be able to fool the people all the time.
In the last 2017 panchayat elections, BJD had secured 11 seats in Nabarangpur while the BJP and Congress had bagged 8 and 7 seats respectively. The BJD had, however, formed the zilla parishad with support from Congress members. In Malkangiri, BJP had formed zilla parishad by winning nine out of 15 seats.