Bhubaneswar: From flying MLAs to a Bengaluru resort to directing legislators to stay in Bhubaneswar, Congress and BJD did everything in their powers to keep the flock together as they looked to defeat the BJP-backed independent candidate in the Rajya Sabha polls, which had turned into a prestige battle.Despite all efforts, it couldn’t stop Dilip Ray from going to Rajya Sabha as 11 MLAs — eight from BJD and three from Congress — cross-voted in his favour. He defeated the BJD and Congress-backed independent candidate Datteswar Hota to secure the crucial fourth seat for Rajya Sabha, which saw a contest in Odisha for the first time since 2014.Ray’s election provided the only bit of entertainment with the rest of the polling going on expected lines. BJP candidates Manmohan Samal and Sujeet Kumar won the two seats with BJD nominee Santrupt Misra also going through.Of the four seats that went to polls, two were earlier held by BJP and two by BJD. In the 147-member assembly, BJP’s strength of 79 MLAs, along with support from three independents, gave it a comfortable margin to win two seats but left it seven short of a third.BJD, with 50 MLAs including two suspended members, had enough to win one seat with the required 30 first-preference votes and had tied up with the Congress’s 14 MLAs to secure another. Cross-voting, however, changed the dynamics.Accusing BJP of horse-trading, BJD president and former CM Naveen Patnaik said most of the non-BJP MLAs who backed the saffron party had “criminal backgrounds”. “I’m ashamed… you can check for yourself how many of their parents went to jail or how many times they themselves were jailed,” Naveen said.Countering him, chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi said such “immature remarks” were unexpected from a former CM who had governed the state for years.“He has insulted not just the MLAs by calling them criminals, but also the voters who elected them. Naveen babu should remember he himself campaigned for many of them,” Majhi said, calling the BJP’s performance “historic” and a “memorable moment in Odisha’s political history”.Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Bhakta Charan Das described the decision of three Congress MLAs — Sofia Firdous, Ramesh Jena and Dasarathi Gamango — to defy the party whip as “unexpected”. “We have taken up the matter with the high command for action,” Das said.For Ray, history repeated itself. The former Union minister, who has declared assets worth Rs 456 crore, once again won a Rajya Sabha seat despite lacking the numbers. His previous victory in 2002 — also as an independent after being expelled from BJD — was similarly made possible through large-scale cross-voting by BJD and BJP MLAs.Ray was first nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1996 and served two consecutive terms (1996-2002 and 2002-2008). He joined BJP in 2009 and won the Rourkela assembly seat in 2014. A key figure in the formation of BJD, Ray was convicted by a special CBI court on Oct 6, 2020, in a 1999 coal block allocation case relating to his tenure as minister of state for coal in the Vajpayee govt. Delhi high court had stayed his conviction in April 2024.
