Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik will be in Delhi on March 29. The visit assumes importance in the backdrop of the upcoming Presidential elections due in July this year, where the support of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) will be crucial.
Mr. Patnaik’s last visit to Delhi was in September 2021, when he came to attend a meeting of Chief Ministers of Maoist-hit States convened by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. There is no clarity on his appointments schedule as of now, but sources indicated that Mr. Patnaik, who will be in Delhi for a few days, expects both the ruling party and Opposition parties to woo him in seeking the support of his MLAs. “He will be here, so it’s up to both the ruling party leaders and the Opposition to meet him,” a BJD MP said.
Opposition parties, hit hard by the debacle in the recent Assembly elections, have not yet started discussions on the Presidential elections. The President of India is elected by an electoral college comprising of 543 Lok Sabha MPs, 233 Rajya Sabha MPs and 4,120 MLAs. The value of the vote of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs remains uniform across the States, but the value of the votes of MLAs depends on the population of the State. Therefore, the value of the vote of a U.P. MLA is the highest in the country.
The Odisha Assembly has 147 MLAs, out of which the BJD holds 112 seats. The value of each Odisha MLA according to the Presidential electoral college is 149. Along with this, the BJD has 12 MPs in the Lok Sabha and nine MPs in the Rajya Sabha. Each of the MPs from the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha hold a value of 708 votes per seat. So, in all, Mr. Patnaik controls 23,072 votes in an electoral college of over 10 lakh votes.
There are no Opposition meetings on the cards. On April 2, the Dravida Munnetra Kazgham (DMK) is inaugurating its office in Delhi at the Deen Dayal Updhayay Marg. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin is arriving for the event and many Opposition leaders have been invited to it. “When all of us get together, this will be one of the issues that we could discuss. But otherwise, so far, no dialogue has begun on the Presidential polls,” a senior Opposition leader said.
