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BJP-BJD seat-sharing talks stalemated

Bibhuti Mishra in Bhubhaneswar

With the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Biju Janata Dal unable to resolve the stalemate on seat-sharing for the Orissa assembly elections the scene has now shifted to Delhi. Two senior leaders of the state BJP are in Delhi now with a list of 73 seats identified by its state election committee. They will apprise the BJP central leadership today of the ground realities in the state. Seat-sharing talks between the two poll partners, who had thumping wins in the 1998 as well as 1999 Lok Sabha elections, have run into rough weather with the BJP demanding 50 per cent of the seats and the BJD steering committee not prepared to concede more than 47 out of the 147 seats in the assembly.

In fact the BJD steering committee has recommended to its chief Naveen Patnaik that the party should contest 122 seats leaving the BJP only 25! Three rounds of talks between the two parties have failed. There will be another round on January 20 after the senior leaders of the state unit of the BJP -- its president Manmohan Samal and its legislature party chief Bishwabhushan Harichandan -- return from Delhi.

The BJD's demand of 122 seats has been termed ''unrealistic and preposterous'' by the BJP. Actually a majority of its leaders are willing to go it alone since they believe that it was the Atal Bihari Vajpayee wave that gave the alliance its victories in the two previous Lok Sabha polls. The BJP does not buy the argument that 1996 should be taken as the cut-off year to assess the party's strength. "At that time the BJD was not even born and the BJP was very weak. If at all the cut-off year is to be taken it should be 1999 and we were very strong in 90 seats then," says a senior BJP leader.

The BJD is unrelenting and a number of hawks in it advocate the party severing its alliance with the BJP if the latter insists on more seats. It is only the central leadership of the BJP that might be able to break the deadlock.

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