Dharmendra Pradhan was being seen as the Chief Ministerial face of the BJP for the 2019 Assembly elections in Odisha even before he was given a prominent rank in last Sunday’s cabinet reshuffle of the Narendra Modi led government.
His newly imposed duties, as the Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, has formally acknowledged his growing presence – something that has been apparent for a while now.
It has signalled to those within the party (and without) that the Rajya Sabha member from Bihar figures prominently in the BJP’s plans for the 2019 elections in Odisha, besides removing the anomaly of a Minister of State enjoying greater clout than a Cabinet minister, Jual Oram, from the state.
Pradhan’s Political Journey
It has not been easy for the man from Talcher to attain his current stature. He has had to work his way up the ladder, taking on formidable opponents within the party – seasoned leaders like Bijay Mohapatra, Dilip Ray and KV Singhdeo among them – along the way. Unlike others who hail from a political family, Pradhan’s political background hasn’t helped him in his career. His father, Debendra Pradhan, never commanded power in the party despite being a union minister.
That he was cut out for bigger things had become clear during his apprenticeship in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Praishad (ABVP) early in his career. Pradhan rose steadily through the ranks of the BJP’s students’ wing, becoming its national general secretary in 1995. He went on to become the national general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BYJM) and then its all-India president in 2006. As a party general secretary since 2011, he has shepherded the BJP’s campaign in Assembly elections, in states like Bihar, Karnataka, Jharkhand and Uttarkhand.
In his last assignment as the BJP’s in-charge for the elections in Uttarakhand, he achieved spectacular success winning 56 out of the 70 Assembly seats for the party in the hill state.
Dharmendra Pradhan: Frontman in Odisha
These successes earned for him the confidence of the Big Two in the BJP – Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah – and chalked out a bigger role for him in Odisha politics. Both Modi and Shah have publicly endorsed the preeminent position of the Union minister in state politics. Pradhan was put in charge of the panchayat elections in the state in February this year, looking after everything from formulating elections strategy to selecting candidates.
Though the BJP’s performance in the Sarpanch elections was modest, the spectacular success it achieved in the zila parishad polls – the only one in the three-tier panchayat elections that is fought on party lines – cemented his role as the foremost leader of the party in Odisha.
When the BJP announced its decision soon after the stupendous victory in Uttar Pradesh to hold its two-day national executive meeting in Bhubaneswar, it was largely attributed to Pradhan. The two-day event left no one in doubt who spearheaded the show. Along with Modi and Shah, Pradhan loomed large on posters and banners that dotted the city with other leaders, including Jual Oram, pushed to the background. It was during this meeting that the BJP, flush with the twin successes in the zila parishad elections in Odisha and the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, announced it was going for the jugular in its bid to capture power in the state.
Pradhan Yet to Be Taken as Naveen’s Competitor
Ever since then, the attacks on the Naveen Patnaik government by the BJP have risen steadily with Pradhan himself taking the lead. During his last visit to the state in July, Amit Shah claimed that his party would form the next government in the state bagging 120 out of the 147 Assembly seats, a claim seen in non-BJP circles as boastful and highly unrealistic.
But when asked how his party would score such numbers when it remained way behind the BJD in the zila parishad elections – on which the current euphoria in BJP is largely based – Pradhan’s cryptic answer to this correspondent was “Elections are won on chemistry and not arithmetic.” The aspirant for Naveen’s chair is certainly picking up the manners of his mentors fast!
Man to man, however, Pradhan is yet to be taken as a serious challenger to Naveen, who has embarked on an elaborate exercise to cut his losses and recover lost ground, by the people at large. But in counter-attacking Pradhan on a daily basis, the BJD has unwittingly sealed his position as Numero Uno in the BJP.
On his part, Pradhan has used his stint as the Union Petroleum minister to good effect, spending generously from the kitty of the oil marketing companies to win friends and influence people. By one informal estimate, the oil marketing companies under his ministry have spent about Rs 47 crore by way of support to various socio cultural organisations over the last three years.
Now that he has become the Minister for Skill Development too, the scope for buying private support with public money will be even greater than it already is.
Over the last few months, both Modi and Shah have made it abundantly clear that Odisha figures prominently in the BJP’s scheme of things for the next few years. It is one of the states where the party feels it has immense scope to expand its footprint.
Though Shah’s claim of 120 seats is being seen largely as an exercise in boosting the morale of the party cadres rather than a realistic assessment of the party’s electoral prospects, there is little doubt that the BJP has now effectively replaced the Congress as the principal opposition party in the state.
Having passed all his political tests with flying colours so far, Pradhan is bracing for the biggest political battle of his career in 2019. If he does even half as well as his party boasts, he would have secured his position as the most important leader in the state in the post-Naveen era.
Video Editor: Purnendu Pritam
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