Congress crisis deepens in Odisha ahead of 2024 polls as two senior leaders suspended

The DAC issued Moquim and Biswal show-cause notices asking for their explanations. “The replies received from them were carefully considered by the DAC…(which) found them unsatisfactory,” said a press release issued by Tariq Anwar, the AICC general secretary and DAC member secretary, on Saturday. The DAC thus decided to place both of them under suspension with immediate effect, Anwar added.

The development highlighted the growing crisis in the faction-ridden Congress in Odisha ahead of the state Assembly and Lok Sabha polls, which are barely nine months away.

During a political function in Bhubaneswar on May 8, both Biswal and Moquim had made certain remarks, which upset the state party leadership. Biswal had purportedly said that although the party has only nine MLAs as many as 20 of its leaders aspired to become the chief minister which, he charged, affected its unity. He had also expressed doubt whether going by its current plight the party would be able to field candidates in all the 147 Assembly constituencies in the state in the 2024 polls.

On his part, Moquim had then purportedly questioned the state leadership’s functioning and asked it to take a “broad-minded approach without believing in whispers”.

The son of former deputy CM and Congress strongman Basant Kumar Biswal, Chiranjib Biswal has been a two-time Congress MLA. His family has had a strong support base in coastal Jagatsinghpur district. In 2004, he was first elected as an MLA from Tirtol. In the 2014 polls, he shifted to the nearby Jagatsinghpur seat after Tirtol was reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and again won. He, however, could not retain his seat in the 2019 polls.

In April 2018, Biswal along with then Jharsuguda MLA Naba Kisore Das and former Lok Sabha member and tribal face Pradeep Majhi were appointed as the OPCC working presidents. While Das, who was shot dead by a police officer on January 29, had switched to BJD ahead of the 2019 polls, Majhi had joined the BJD in November 2021.

Despite the Congress’s decimation in the 2019 polls, Moquim managed to win the Cuttack-Barabati seat in coastal Odisha due to his own political heft. During the Presidential election last year, he had gone against the party line and voted for the NDA’s nominee Droupadi Murmu, who hails from Odisha. He had then said that voting for Murmu was his personal decision and that he had listened to his heart.

Reacting to his suspension, Moquim denied that he has indulged in any anti-party activities. “I have not done anything that a sitting MLA would be suspended for. Whatever statements I had made was in a workshop held to discuss Congress’s strength during the period of J B Patnaik and Basant Kumar Biswal. Several Congress workers participated in the workshop,” he said. On whether he would quit Congress, Moquim claimed he would remain with the party.

The disciplinary action against two senior leaders in the election year has not gone down well with a section of party leaders, who called it “unwarranted” and “unnecessary”.

Sarat Pattanayak, however, said the OPCC accepted the AICC’s move, claiming that the Congress would remain united and emerge stronger.

The Congress has been out of power in Odisha for more than two decades. In the elections to the 147-member Assembly in 2019, the Congress even lost the tag of the principal Opposition party to the BJP, which won 23 seats as against the grand old party’s 9 and the incumbent BJD’s 112.

In six of the eight bypolls held in the state since 2019, the Congress’s candidates lost their deposits.