Odisha’s media baron who targeted Naveen Patnaik’s powerful aide dropped from BJD post

Here are two examples of the MLA’s writings on Pandian that appeared in Sambad last month:

* August 18: He labelled Pandian’s district visits a “sponsored programme” in his column. He asked when collectors were appointed to districts to hear the grievances of people, why was so much money being spent on these visits by the CM’s aide. Taking a dig at BJD leaders, Patnaik said MLAs and ministers were working through day and night to make Pandian’s visits a success and that they hold umbrellas for him when it rains.

* August 27: In this column, Patnaik drew a parallel between Pandian and Yashpal Kapoor, the secretary of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Accusing Pandian of making political speeches, Patnaik said Gandhi’s election was invalidated by the Allahabad High Court because Kapoor delivered an election speech for her.

The BJD legislator also compared the cost of Pandian’s visit with the expenditure on the Chandrayaan-3 mission. He said while the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spent Rs 600 crore on Chandrayaan-3, the cost of Pandian’s visit would almost be equal to this amount by the time he completes his tour of the districts.

Patnaik said BJD had once demanded the inclusion of “ahimsa (non-violence)” in the Preamble of the Constitution and pressed for the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill but chose to remain silent when women were exploited during the violence in Manipur.

Responding to the party’s decision, Soumya Ranjan on Tuesday said he does not think of this as having lost anything as neither he nor any other BJD leader had any role in the party. The media magnate said he sought time to meet Patnaik last week but the request was not granted. The MLA expressed doubt if the signature on the order to remove him as vice president was that of the CM. Though BJD leaders have yet to make any comment, the party’s secretary for organisation Pranab Prakash Das made a cryptic post on the matter on X. “Gratitude is the greatest medium of prayer. Where there is no gratitude, even God does not cooperate,” he wrote.

Soumya Ranjan is not the first leader to have developed differences with the party leadership over Pandian’s rise. Senior leaders such as Baijayant Panda, who is now the BJP’s national vice-president, Damodar Rout, and Pradeep Panigrahy have been shown the door over the years because of their fallout with the CM’s trusted aide.

Political trajectory

The son-in-law of former Odisha CM J B Patnaik of the Congress, Soumya Ranjan joined the BJD in March 2018. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha within hours of joining the party. The following year, he entered the Assembly after winning from Khandapada by 81,430 votes, one of the highest margins in that election.

Despite being in the Treasury Bench, the 71-year-old posed tough questions to the government in public. As the rift between him and the party widened because of the questions he raised about Pandian, the MLA received the backing of Opposition parties BJP and Congress. But his party colleagues such as Arun Sahoo and ministers such as Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak and Pratap Keshari Deb accused him of blackmailing the party and often changing parties. Deb on Saturday told Soumya Ranjan to quit the BJD if he was unable to maintain discipline.

Responding to the accusation of blackmail, the MLA said whatever he had been saying was meant to strengthen the BJD and he was not against the party. Citing a recent survey by a national magazine, Patnaik said it showed that the CM’s popularity was on the wane. “Is there any deliberation within the party to find out the reason behind the diminishing popularity? Is it against the party to point out the party’s lacunae? I cannot be a worker who can nod my head at everything,” he said.

Taking a dig at Pandian, Soumya Ranjan said he cannot do politics while being a secretary and the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) cannot function as a party office. “Many BJD workers at the grassroots support my statement. However, if someone with a vested interest will run the party in the name of CM, it’s not acceptable. The BJD is not anyone’s ancestral property,” he told reporters.

Soumya Ranjan received his Master’s degree in political science from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in 1972 and in Public Administration from Utkal University in 1974. He taught at BHU for a brief period before returning to Odisha to launch his newspaper. The younger brother of former Odisha Congress president Niranjan Patnaik, he spent some time in the BJP before 1995. He was elected to the 11th Lok Sabha from Bhubaneswar in 1996 on a Congress ticket.

As the Congress’s fortunes in the state nosedived following the rise of the BJD, Soumya Ranjan’s political career, too, hit a wall. He lost the 1998 and 2004 Lok Sabha polls to the BJD’s Prasanna Kumar Patasani from Bhubaneswar. He lost the 2009 Assembly election from Khandapada. The Congress expelled Patnaik in October 2013 for “anti-party” activities after he conducted the Sankalp Yatra to boost the morale of party workers. He later converted his organisation “Aama Odisha” into a political party but it failed to take off. Patnaik contested the 2014 Assembly election from Khandapada on an “Aama Odisha” ticket but lost to the BJD’s Anubhav Patnaik by just 601 votes. Before joining the BJD, Patnaik was associated with several movements against the state government, including the multi-thousand crore chit-fund scam.