Pandian is likely to shape BJD politics in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
Former Indian Administrative Officer, V. Karthikeyan Pandian, who for years was described as the “Super Chief Minister” of Odisha, will play a key role for the Biju Janata Dal in the upcoming Assembly elections in Odisha and the Lok Sabha elections. Pandian, the 2000 batch IAS officer, who took voluntary retirement in October last year when he still had more than ten years left in service, was born in Koothappanpatti, Melur, Tamil Nadu.
He became the proverbial eye and ear of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in May 2011, when he was appointed as the Private Secretary to the CM in the rank of Deputy Secretary, which was just his seventh posting. Soon after the VRS, Pandian officially joined the BJD in November. Since then, the May 1974- born Pandian, who has a Master’s of Science in Plant Physiology from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, has acted as a larger- than-life shadow to the 77-year-old Patnaik, who has been serving as CM since 5 March 2000.
Pandian, even before he took VRS, was regarded by foreign diplomats and bureaucrats working in Delhi, as someone who held more influence in the state than the Chief Minister himself when it came to policy discussions and decisions related to Odisha. While initially, Pandian was more focused on the policy related to the administration of the state, now, party sources said, he is also handling the party’s affairs in the state in an aggressive manner and all the candidates for both the Assembly elections and the Lok Sabha elections of BJD will be finalized only after Pandian has said yes.
According to his supporters in the BJD, Pandian caught the attention of Patnaik due to the “good work” he did as district magistrate in Ganjam district and soon enough gained the trust of the CM for doing both administrative as well as political work. According to BJD leaders, Pandian, improving on the template of Patnaik, will be seeking a more cordial relations with the BJP in the state and at the Centre, with some even not ruling out the possibility of the BJD formally joining the National Democratic Alliance in the coming months.
On Wednesday, after the nomination of Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, was announced by the BJP as its Rajya Sabha candidate from Odisha, the BJD released a press note stating that it would support Vaishnaw. The BJD has 109 MLAs in the 146-member Assembly (one is vacant) and a Rajya Sabha candidate from the state needs 38 first preference votes to win from there.
The BJD has decided to send two of its candidates, while transferring the remaining 33 votes (109-76) to the BJP, which only has 22 MLAs, thereby making the win of Vaishnaw a foregone conclusion, which otherwise would not have been possible. Party sources said that if the BJD wanted it, it could have sent a third candidate too, but Patnaik in consultation with Pandian, decided to assist Vaishnaw for the “larger good” of the state. In 2019 too, Vaishnaw was elected to the Upper House as BJP candidate with the help of BJD.
Originally from Jodhpur, Rajasthan, Vaishnaw joined the IAS in 1994 and was allotted the Odisha cadre. He quit the service in 2010. According to a Bhubaneswar- based political observer, with Patnaik making it abundantly clear that Pandian is his successor, BJD MLAs and MPs too have started toeing the line as Pandian’s office has been suggesting on matters concerning the state and the party.
However, there are murmurs of internal dissent against this “whole system” that Patnaik has woven, while keeping Pandian at the centre, with a few party leaders upset at being asked to “report” to a bureaucrat, who has no electoral experience, with his only political experience being that of being close to Naveen Patnaik.
This dissent is likely to come out in the open in the coming days, but given the ironhand with which Pandian has been handing the administration and the party, right now, these upset party leaders are maintaining a studied silence. According to a BJD leader, there was strong speculation that post the polls, the BJP and BJD would come together “more officially” and those who do not accept this arrangement are likely to be expelled. In September last year, one of the tallest BJD leaders, media baron and Khandapada MLA, Soumya Ranjan Patnaik was expelled from the BJD.
Patnaik is no ordinary leader. He is the son-in-law of former Chief Minister J.B. Patnaik and the high-profile owner and editor of popular Odia daily “Sambad”, who also runs a media channel. A few days before his expulsion, he was removed from the post of BJD vice-president. Later the office of Sambad was raided by the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of the state Crime Branch in connection with a case related to an alleged loan scam.
Patnaik had earlier created rare ripples in the corridors of power by daring to write pieces criticising V.K. Pandian and questioning his style of functioning and his visits to various districts—where he was accorded more importance than elected representatives like MPs and MLAs by the state administration and cadre.
According to local journalists, Pandian does not like dissent in any form and while a large number of party leaders have accepted him as their leader, quite a few remain standing, who are waiting for the right time to speak out against him and what they term instances of business interest of Tamil groups getting special privilege in Odisha. The state police in the recent past have filed cases against media organizations that have written pieces that are not perceived as positive pieces on Pandian.
This high-handedness has also caused anger in the media fraternity in Odisha, something that has been shared by local journalists with top BJP leaders who come from Odisha. The BJP, for now, has decided not to unruffle the feathers and is playing a wait and watch game, with Naveen Patnaik’s health showing clear signs of him needing retirement from active politics. This is a far cry from the combative attitude that the BJP had adopted a few months ago against the BJD and Pandian.
In June last year, BJP Lok Sabha member from Bhubaneswar, Aparajita Sarangi had done a press conference and alleged that the people’s mandate to govern Odisha has been “hijacked by a bureaucrat”, who has made the elected representative of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) helpless. While she did not name Pandian, it was clear as day as to who she was referring to. A few days after this highly publicized and rare attack on Pandian, the Centre asked the Odisha government to take appropriate action against Pandian on allegation of violation of All India Services Conduct (AISC) Rules, 1948.
The DoPT directed Odisha Chief Secretary Pradeep Kumar Jena to take “action as appropriate” by forwarding the complaint submitted by BJP Lok Sabha MP Aparajita Sarangi, who herself is a 1994 batch retired IAS officer and party state president Manmohan Samal. In their complaint, Sarangi and Samal had attached photographs and videos to show that Pandian was moving around the state using a state plane/helicopter and attending public reception and announcing new projects while invoking the CM, which they claimed was being done in clear violation of service rules.
In her press conference, Sarangi, who is also a national spokesperson of BJP, had stated, “We are witnessing a strange and incredible governance system in Odisha. People have started to question whether the government is run by the persons they had voted for or by a secretary-level official who has cunningly hijacked the entire administration. The BJD’s elected representatives have vanished from the scene.
The MLAs and MPs of the ruling parties have become a laughing stock for their timidity before the particular government officer.” The Congress too had raised questions about the free rein that Pandian had been given by Patnaik. In October 2023, after Pandian took VRS with a request for waiver of notice period, which was accepted by the DopT, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that, “He has been a fine civil servant and helped Naveen Patnaik enormously. But it is good that a de facto situation will finally become a de jure one, and Pandian will become a political figure in his own right.
It was a strange situation in Odisha for over a decade and a half, with the CM being like an absentee landlord and his chief aide functioning as the state’s CEO.”Irrespective of the political attacks and murmurs of dissent, Pandian, for now, is moving forward rapidly and the close comradeship between him and Patnaik and the confidence the CM has on him is equated with similar ties that were shared by two prominent individuals from Tamil Nadau—V. Sasikala and J. Jayalalithaa, who was the CM of Tamil Nadu and the president of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.