The Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which was firmly ensconced in the treasury bench for the past 24 years, on Wednesday named party president Naveen Patnaik as the Leader of Opposition in the Odisha Assembly.
Septuagenarian Patnaik, who ruled the state uninterruptedly since 2000 before losing out to a resurgent BJP in 2024, never sat on the Opposition benches.
The BJP legislature party, which sat on Wednesday afternoon after the electoral defeat in the Assembly polls, picked the party supremo Patnaik as the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.
Rairakhol MLA and BJD stalwart Prasanna Acharya was selected as the Deputy Leader of Opposition while former Speaker and Binjharpur MLA Pramila Mallick was nominated as the Opposition chief whip. Similarly, Aul MLA and former minister Pratap Keshari Deb was named as the deputy chief whip in the Assembly.
The BJP ended Naveen Patnaik’s 24-year-long fairytale tenure as the head of the BJD government in Odisha and formed the government by securing 78 seats in the 147-member Odisha Assembly. The BJD managed to secure 51 seats, while the Congress won 14 seats, followed by three seats by Independents and one seat by the CPI(M).
Patnaik, the charismatic regional satrap, narrowly missed breaking the record for the longest tenure as CM held by Pawan Kumar Chamling, the former CM of Sikkim.
Patnaik, who never aimed for pan-India expansion of the party, failed to halt the BJP’s electoral juggernaut. Thus, it marked the end of Patnaik’s eventful and largely clean 24-year tenure at the helm of governance in Odisha.
Patnaik, a man of few words and widely regarded for upright governance, had ruled the state since 2000 without ever losing a single election, maintaining his invincibility in electoral politics. However, this time, he lost to a relatively unknown BJP candidate by over 16,000 votes in the Kantabanji seat, while narrowly winning the traditional Hinjili seat.
Patnaik surpassed former West Bengal CM Jyoti Basu last year as the second longest-serving Chief Minister in India. He would have achieved a rare distinction in India’s electoral political history if he had returned to power. He was just 74 days short of entering the record books as the longest-serving CM, a feat achieved by Pawan Kumar Chamling, the former CM of Sikkim. Chamling ruled Sikkim for 24 years and 166 days.