Vice-President election: In boost to NDA’s Radhakrishnan, BJD to abstain from voting

Currently, the BJD, which had failed to open its account in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, has seven Rajya Sabha MPs.

BJD sources said Patnaik, who has been in Delhi for the past few days, met a group of the party MPs before taking the call to stay away from voting. He also recently held a PAC meeting to discuss the party’s stand over the Vice-Presidential poll.

Sources said a majority of the senior BJD leaders suggested that the party should oppose the NDA nominee while leaving it to Patnaik to take the final call. The BJD is the principal Opposition party in Odisha being ruled by the BJP.

Sources also said that even though an influential BJD section tried to convince Patnaik to support Radhakrishnan, the decision to stay away from voting was finally taken considering the majority view within the party that favoured voting against the NDA candidate.

“Though the decision to stay away from voting is like a tactical support to the NDA nominee, this would have been embarrassment for the BJD leaders and cadres had the party announced its support for the NDA nominee. There is an impression among the masses that the BJD is not up to the mark as an Opposition and it still has a good rapport with the BJP central leadership,” said a BJD leader who did not want to be identified.

Several BJD leaders said the regional party, which lost power to the BJP after ruling the state for 24 years in 2024, should have sent out a message to the people by opposing the NDA nominee in the Vice-Presidential election.

The BJD’s decision to abstain from voting seems to be a well thought out strategy to manage the growing dissent within the party over its perceived leaning towards the NDA-led central government.

In April this year, the BJD faced rumblings with some senior party leaders openly questioning the decision to change its stance at the last moment in the Rajya Sabha during voting on the Waqf amendment Bill. While the party opposed the Bill during the discussion in the House, it allowed its MPs to vote as per their conscience later, which was seen by many in the party as a tactic to support the NDA over the Bill.

“More leaders would have questioned the party leadership had it decided to support the NDA nominee in the V-P poll. The decision to abstain from voting is like an escape route,” said a BJD leader.

The leadership of both the BJP and the Congress had reached out to Patnaik to seek his support for their respective V-P nominees.

Senior BJP leader and Union tribal affairs minister Jual Oram, who is from Odisha, told reporters in Delhi that the BJD’s decision to abstain would be like supporting the NDA nominee, who has a distinct numerical edge over the Opposition’s candidate.

Despite the BJD’s claim of following an “equidistance policy”, it had in the past extended support to the NDA on crucial Bills and events including the Presidential polls in 2017 and 2022.

The party’s current decision to abstain from voting echoed its strategy that it adopted in the 2012 V-P election between the Congress-led UPA’s Hamid Ansari and the NDA’s Jaswant Singh, which was clinched by Ansari.