Naveen Patnaik today presents a picture of a man besieged. With scam after scam, his own integrity has come under serious question

From cloud nine to terra firma, in four months flat. The descent has been remarkably steep. It is hard to believe that it has taken less than four months for the man who emerged as the darling of the masses and the toast of the national media for his stupendous victory in the twin elections last summer (20 out of 21 Lok Sabha seats and 117 out of the 147 Assembly seats) to fritter away all the goodwill and become a pale shadow of the invincible man he was at the start of his fourth successive term.

Naveen Patnaik today presents a picture of a man besieged. With scam after scam tumbling out of the woodwork with frightening frequency, his own integrity has come under serious question for the first time ever in his uninterrupted 14-year long reign. In another first during Naveen’s reign, his writ appears to have stopped running in the party he built so painstakingly. Senior party leaders have been openly bickering among themselves, hurling accusations at one another and washing all their dirty linen in the public in wanton disregard of the party supremo’s diktat – and to the great delight of television channels. With his most trusted lieutenants causing him the biggest embarrassment with their dubious role in the chit fund and land scams, Naveen suddenly finds he has no one to turn to for advice and support.

The air is thick with intrigue and conspiracy theories are having a free run. The voluble Agriculture minister Pradip Maharathy actually went public with his dire warning to those in the party who were conspiring against The Leader and threat to ‘rip their mask apart’ – proving in the process that the conspiracy theories were not merely the result of someone’s imagination running riot. But what really set the cat among the pigeons was his declaration that he was ready to accept even Ajit Patnaik, Naveen’s nephew, as his leader, inevitably sparking speculation about a post-Naveen scenario.

Such speculation has a lot to do with reports that Naveen is not in the pink of health. Talk of Naveen’s falling health has now gone beyond the realm of speculation and has attained a certain credibility of its own – so much so that the Chief Minister’s minders had to come out with a clarification that he was hale and hearty the day ‘Outlook’ broke the media silence on the issue and reported about it . [The clarification was run all day long on a leading Odia news channel last Sunday]. But the denial has not stopped the grapevine from coming out with the story that the BJD boss has kept postponing a visit to the US for treatment since the energy-sapping elections in April-May for fear of having a repeat of the May 2012 coup-that-wasn’t by disgraced former mentor Pyari Mohan Mohapatra.

Much of Naveen’s current problems actually have their origins in the choice he made at the time. Always the Big Picture man, Naveen has never really had an appetite for the nitty-gritty of party affairs. BJD leaders confide that most district presidents of the party have to introduce themselves – or be introduced by someone else – every time they meet the supremo. Thus, it was only natural that Naveen would look for someone to do the job that Mohapatra did rather efficiently for nearly a decade before his ambition got the better of him.

And the man Naveen zeroed in on was Kalpataru Das, the affable and low profile four-time MLA from Dharmasala. He was made a minister and was given the key portfolios of Panchayati Raj and Parliamentary Affairs. He slipped into Mohapatra’s shoes remarkably smoothly and soon emerged as the man who had the eyes and ears of Naveen. It was only a matter of time before he became the voice of the leader as well and began calling the shots both in the party and the government. He is believed to have decided the party nominees in a majority of parliament and Assembly seats during the last elections.

The man who had soared to dizzying heights in just two years now stands thoroughly disgraced, having had to resign as the leader of the BJD parliamentary party in the wake of damaging revelations about his indiscriminate and illegal acquisition of property in Odisha and outside, including a vast patch of forest land on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. The last straw came when his son Pranab Balabantaray (yes, that is what his title is) was grilled for nearly two hours by the CBI in connection with the ongoing probe into the multi thousand crore chit fund scam in the state. Das was asked to resign the very next day.

Kalpataru, however, is by no means the only man giving sleepless nights to Naveen. While party MP Ramachandra Hansda and senior leader Pravat Tripathy have already been raided, there are at least two more ministers, a couple of formers ministers and several BJD MLAs who are under the CBI scanner and could be called for questioning or even arrested for their role in facilitating and nourishing the chit fund scam. Advocate general Ashok Mohanty’s long ignored resignation given four months ago was suddenly accepted by the chief minister barely hours before he was quizzed about a questionable land deal he entered into with Pradip Sethy, a key player in the chit fund scam, on Saturday.

As if the damaging revelations about the involvement of his party leaders, MLAs and ministers in the chit fund scam was not enough, the chief minister now also has to contend with the massive land scam that threatens to embroil more party leaders. Two cabinet ministers – Bijayshree Routray and Pradip Maharathy - have already been found to have usurped government land and there are sure signs that more party leaders are set to join the usurpers’ ranks.

But Naveen, who has built a reputation for dropping ministers at the drop of a hat at the slightest hint of corruption, has realised that he cannot afford to do that anymore because there are far too many of them. Acting against all of them, he knows, could split the party.

While the revelations about his party men’s role in the chit fund and land scam have taken much of the shine off his image as ‘Mr Clean’, the one thing that Naveen dreads the most at this stage is a CBI inquiry into the mega mining scam, which he knows would not stop at MLAs and ministers and could lead right up to his door.

Naveen has never looked more vulnerable in his political career – not even when Pyari staged the failed coup. His power to act, cut deals and influence the course of events appears to have deserted him. His plight is best described with those immortal lines from WB Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” If he comes out of it and reasserts his authority, it will be one of the most remarkable turnarounds in Indian politics.