RAJESH MAHAPATRA

Emerging from the meeting of the party national executive on Saturday, president Amit Shah declared that the BJP will take Odisha when it goes to the polls in 2019, coterminous with the general elections in the country. From “panchayat to Parliament,” he said, the party is geared up to win every election that the country sees between now and then.

Shah’s confidence was echoed by every leader at the two-day conclave, which saw chief ministers from 13 states and almost the entire cabinet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in attendance. The crowds at Modi’s roadshow from the airport to the venue of the meeting prompted some analysts to draw parallels with the popular support Indira Gandhi had once won in this eastern state.

While there might be some truth in all of this, a closer scrutiny of the reality on the ground would suggest winning Odisha is still a long shot for the BJP.

Much of the confidence that the BJP exudes over Odisha comes from the panchayat elections held in February. The BJP won 297 of 853 zilla parishad seats, riding on an anti-incumbency mood against the 17-year-old government of chief minister Naveen Patnaik and his Biju Janata Dal that the faction-ridden Congress party failed to cash in on. The BJP’s gain came mostly at the Congress’s expense.

Naveen’s party still won 474 seats, which put the party ahead in about 94 of the 147 assembly constituencies in the state. The victories for the BJP put the party ahead in 41 constituencies. For the sake of brevity, if we were to make a simple extrapolation from the zilla parishad result, it doesn’t give BJP even half the seats the BJD would win if elections are held today — let alone a majority in the assembly.

Yet like a fox in the henhouse, the BJP has managed to ruffle a party that has a stable, long-run-