Once the main Opposition party in Odisha and a force to contend with, the Congress has been relegated to the third position in the state since the 2019 Assembly elections, when the BJP leapfrogged it to become the main challenger to the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). The party’s downturn is the result of constant infighting, lack of resources, and a weakening organisation. The Congress’s poor electoral run continued in the recent local body polls. In the urban civic elections, the party managed to win seven of the 108 urban local bodies (ULBs), down from 13 in the 2013-’14 polls. It failed to open its account in the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation election, won one of the 42 corporator posts in Berhampur Municipal Corporation, and eight of the 59 posts in the Cuttack Municipal Corporation. Of the total 1,716 councillor posts across the state, the party bagged 134. 🗞️ Subscribe Now: Get Express Premium to access the best Election reporting and analysis 🗞️ A month earlier, the party had put in a similarly dismal performance in the three-tier panchayat elections, ending up third as it won 37 of the 853 Zilla Parishad seats. In the 2017 elections, the party had won 60 seats. The grand old party has been out of power in the state since 2000. In the 2014 state polls, it won 16 of the 147 Assembly seats. The tally almost halved five years later as the party bagged only nine constituencies. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress won just one (Koraput) of 21 parliamentary constituencies. A senior state Congress leader said, “There was a lack of resources and the party management machinery has gone defunct. People have still shown faith in us and despite being in a weaker position than the ruling BJD or the BJP, we had our share of wins. But a better support system would have ensured a better performance. In 2017, when elections were held and neighbouring states had BJP in power, there was support even from there. Today, a neighbouring state has the Congress in power but the support system is completely lacking.” Since 2000, the party’s vote share in Odisha has nosedived from 35 per cent to below 20 per cent. In the 2019 Assembly polls, the party received 16.12 per cent votes, a drastic decline from the 25.7 per cent votes it secured in 2014. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress got 13.81 per cent of the votes, down from 26.38 per cent five years earlier. Congress state president Niranjan Patnaik said the party was trying to reform its grassroots organisation. “We have accepted the recent results and are thankful to those who supported us,” Patnaik told The Indian Express. “We are planning to renew the membership of our party from the grassroots. And the reformation will be brought out with effective changes from the grassroots level, which will strengthen our organisational structure.” One of the major obstacles before the party has been a lack of stability in the state leadership. Since 2000, the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) has had nine presidents. Patnaik is among the three OPCC chiefs to have led the state unit twice in this period. He first led the party from 2011 to 2013 while his current tenure began in April 2018. Questions about Patnaik’s leadership and internal discord have made the news time and again. Though the party high command has intervened several times to broker a truce, the infighting still becomes public now and then. Some senior state Congress leaders have been vocal about the need to remove Patnaik — he himself has offered to step down several times — but nothing changes. “Every time the demands grow louder, the matter is resolved and we are back to square one only to face the same fate again and again. The central leadership must take a call before the party is completely wiped out from the state,” said one leader. Organisational weaknesses and infighting have also seen several leaders quit the Congress in recent years. Before the 2019 elections, then state Congress working president Naba Kishore Das switched over to the BJD. Now, he is the health minister in the Naveen Patnaik government. Last October, the party lost its working president Pradeep Majhi to the ruling party. However, the high command continues to repose its faith in the current leadership. “It is known that the recent elections were not held democratically. It was purely conducted on money power. But despite that our vote share has been fair and people have voted for us in a sizeable number. Our aim ahead is to strengthen the party base in the state,” said A Chella Kumar, the central Congress leader in charge of Odisha.
