Bijay's Blog

Charismatic Leader In late nineties, they already decided to move on sans those core but contentious issues. National Democratic Alliance (NDA) drafted its common minimum program that put those matters in back burner in the interest of good governance. The decimated Congress without firm leadership never enthused electorates enough to rally behind it, so nobody made any fuss about the said shift in BJP's election strategy. Also BJP's political formation at national level seem to be the only available and a formidable option. As usual Congress was more concerned about its conventional pockets to put forward a good fight. The rhetoric of secularism and allegations of communal agenda against the nationalist party never gained any ground. The reason was quite obvious, leading the pack was an unblemished character, AB Bajpai. He was able to march the whole bunch of ideological fence sitters behind him. The noteworthy exceptions here were already marginalized, let that be the e...

My Image My Mask... The BJD was formed in late 90s carved out of erstwhile Janata Dal, while the state was ruled by unpopular Congress party. However a handful of leaders chalked out a plan to engineer an alliance with BJP against the wish of few senior leaders. In the national politics BJP was then a rising sun so the new party's alliance with BJP proved to be a all out success sweeping the LS altogether in its favor. Then BJD virtually replaced its parent party Janata Dal with most of its leaders and cadres jumping into the brand new party. Eventually the alliance won the state election held in the same year. In the meanwhile, otherwise new Naveen Patnaik with his close associate Pyari Mohan Mohapatra strengthen their cadre base and eliminated strong leaders like Bijay Mohapatra, and Dillip Ray (also the founder members) as they were threat to the former. BJD successfully sold Naveen's clean image while defaming rivals both within and outside the party, while the pa...