When the 14th Orissa Assembly convenes in June, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik can afford to relax. Having routed the Opposition in the just-concluded Assembly election, the 62-year-old won't be expecting many tough questions from Opposition benches.
Patnaik's Biju Janata Dal (BJD) holds 103 seats in the 147-member Assembly thus pushing the Opposition to the margins. This is the first time since the Biju Patnaik-led Janata Dal held a similar dominating position in the Assembly after winning 123 seats in the 1990 election. Though there was no recognised Opposition party in the Assembly then as none could secure the requisite number of seats, Congress stalwarts like former chief minister Nandini Satpathy, Hemananda Biswal, Basanta Biswal, Raghunath Patnaik and Habibullah Khan ensured that Bjiu Patnaik did not have it easy.
Though the Opposition has more seats this time (Congress has 26 seats and the BJP, 6), there is hardly a leader in its ranks who can be a real challenge to Naveen Patnaik as veterans like J B Patnaik, Niranjan Jena, Jaydev Jena, Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra and Nalinikanta Mohanty from the Congress and Biswabhushan Harichandan, Dharmendra Pradhan, Sameer Dey and Manmohan Samal from the BJP failed to make it to the Assembly. Three of the seven BJP legislators and 15 of the 26 Congress legislators are first-timers. In fact, almost half the MLA's in the Assembly are newcomers.
The BJP's Legislative Party leader in the previous Assembly, Biswabhushan Harichandan, agrees that the quality of debates will be affected. "Very few Opposition members have any significant parliamentary experience which is needed to face a strong ruling party. Unfortunately, almost all senior BJP leaders including me and several Congress leaders have been defeated in this election. The ruling party may not allow serious debates and may ride roughshod over the Opposition," Harichandan said.
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