By showing the BJP the door, Patnaik has taken a calculated gamble. The response to his public meetings in the past three months has convinced him that the Rs 2/kg rice programme will pay handsome electoral dividends, as it did for the BJP in Chhattisgarh, and allow him to also undercut the Congress’s social constituency. If his audacity pays off, he wins a third term and national compulsions deem it fit, he can move back to the NDA — with honour, on better terms and unencumbered by local baggage. He doesn’t belong in a rag-tag Third Front.
The writer is a political columnist with links to the BJP.
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