BJD-BJP alliance redraws poll equations in Orissa

(SANEPR.com) March 23, 2009 -- BJD-BJP alliance redraws poll equations in Orissa

Bhubaneswar. Terming each other "betrayer", the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the BJP which together fought the last three Lok Sabha elections in Orissa on a 12:9 seat sharing formula, will now enter the battle for ballot in the coming elections as "friend turned foe" much to the advantage of the Congress which was marginalised in both the 1999 and 2004 elections.

With the Assembly and the Lok Sabha elections just a month away, the BJD and BJP have started accusing each other of breaking the alliance. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik made it a point in his election campaign to say that the BJP took just 11 minutes to break the 11-year-long alliance while the BJP staged a massive rally here describing the Chief Minister as a great "betrayer" for breaking the alliance unilaterally.

Political pundits argued that the collapse of alliance between the BJD and the BJP, just on the eve of elections in the state, was bound to upset all poll calculation and lead to a new political polarisation in the state.The last two Lok Sabha elections in the state witnessed a virtually straight contest between the BJD-BJP combine on one hand and the Congress on the other, in which the former had swept the polls bagging 19 of the total 21 seats in 1999 elections and 18 in 2004.