Naveen Patnaik, who steered the Biju Janata Dal to a landslide victory in the Odisha assembly elections, was on Wednesday sworn in as chief minister for a fourth consecutive term.
Patnaik and 21 ministers were administered the oath of office and secrecy by Governor S C Jamir at the Raj Bhavan. The eleven who took oath as cabinet ministers were Pradip Kumar Amat, Damodar Rout, Debi Prasad Mishra, Pradip Maharathy, Bijayshree Routray, Bikram Keshari Arukh, Usha Devi, Lal Behari Himirika, Jogendra Behera, Badri Narayan Patra and Puspendra Singhdeo. The remaining ten were ministers of state.
Five members of the previous ministry were dropped, while the new team included eight first time ministers, including cabinet minister Jogendra Behera.
Patnaik, once considered a political novice and reluctant inheritor of Biju Patnaik’s mantle, steered his party to a landslide victory in the assembly and Lok Sabha polls, winning 117 of the 147 assembly seas and 20 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats. Despite mmany upheavals, the BJD supremo has been able to register an unprecedented record victory this time as Odisha remained untouched by the Narendra Modi.
Patnaik, 67, has effectively tackled the party’s internal affairs and countered the opposition onslaught to raise the popularity of BJD in every successive election. Patnaik was inducted into politics after his father’s death in 1997. He became a Lok Sabha member winning the by-election from Aska. A year later Naveen floated the Biju Janata Dal, a regional party named after his father and entered into an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party to become a cabinet minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998.
Two years later, when the BJP-BJD alliance was voted back to power in Odisha, he was made chief minister. However, ties between the BJD and BJP soured in the aftermath of Kandhamal riots in 2008 and Patnaik severed the alliance with the saffron party.
The move not only strengthened Naveen’s secular credentials, but also propelled BJD’s poll prospects in 2009 when it won 14 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats and 103 of the 147 seats in the Odisha assembly.
