Bhubaneswar: From fielding a common Rajya Sabha candidate to sharing the stage with the Congress’s top brass and giving a guarded response to alliance queries, former chief minister and BJD president Naveen Patnaik’s moves on Thursday — Biju Patnaik’s birth anniversary — set off intense buzz about new political equations in Odisha.For the first time, the Naveen-led BJD stepped into a formal, shared political venture with its traditional rival Congress by fielding a joint nominee, Datteswar Hota, for a Rajya Sabha seat where no party has the numbers to win on its own. The choice marked a notable shift for a party that long maintained equidistance from both the BJP and the Congress.When BJD nominee Santrupt Misra and BJD-Congress-backed independent Datteswar Hota filed their nomination papers, Naveen sat alongside OPCC president Bhakta Charan Das, CLP leader Rama Chandra Kadam, AICC Odisha in-charge Ajay Lallu, and Congress veteran Narasingha Mishra — an unusual display of bonhomie between the two parties.The optics continued inside a closed-door meeting of BJD MLAs addressed by Naveen, which the Congress top brass attended. “I was taken aback when the Congress leaders walked in. I had no idea that they would also be part of the meeting,” a senior BJD MLA told TOI.What further fuelled speculation was Naveen’s carefully worded reply to questions about a possible BJD-Congress alliance. “Let us see. Time always tells future history,” he said, pointedly neither denying nor endorsing the prospect. When reminded of his earlier remark that “every bone of him is secular”, Naveen responded, “Well, I repeat that.”Congress veteran Narasingha Mishra, however, attempted to play down the speculation. “The understanding is only for the Rajya Sabha election. Nothing more should be read into it right now,” he said.Naveen’s political trajectory gives context to the new interest his latest moves generated. A minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA govt, he later headed a BJD-BJP coalition govt in Odisha for two terms before severing ties ahead of the 2009 Lok Sabha and assembly polls. From 2014 to 2024, as chief minister, Naveen maintained smooth working relations with the Narendra Modi govt, extending support on several contentious issues despite officially staying equidistant.Naveen’s latest outreach to the Congress — and his refusal to rule out future alignments — is, therefore, being read as a significant political signal.
