Orissa was not one of these states, for elections there were not due until 1974. Even so, Indira Gandhi took the opportunity to send Nandini Satpathy there as chief minister. Everyone perceived this as her rise and rise. And so it seemed. By 1974, when Orissa elections were in the offing, the afterglow of Bangladesh had faded. Both the Congress party and Indira Gandhi personally were facing hard times. But Nandini Satpathy, fighting stoically and single-handed, won the assembly poll hands down and began her second tenure as chief minister. Many began to believe that something of Indira Gandhi’s strength and determination had rubbed off on her. She was dubbed Orissa’s ‘Iron Lady’. That could also have been the start of her decline. For, after the imposition of the Emergency in June 1975, any Congress leader with a claim to a power base of his or her own was suspect. Moreover, to be a Leftist had ceased to be an asset and become a liability.

In any case, in 1976, Indira Gandhi eased out UP’s self-confident and ambitious chief minister, H. N. Bahuguna, first and then Nandini Satpathy in Orissa. They could do nothing except to bide their time. On February 1, 1977, shortly after Indira Gandhi has announced fresh elections, Babu Jagjivan Ram gave her a big jolt by resigning from the government and the Congress, forming a new party, the Congress for Democracy, and joining hands with the newly cobbled Janata. Bahuguna and Satpathy were the first to jump on his bandwagon. The rest is history. In Orissa power went back to Biju Patnaik, the strongman who ruled the state from his perch in the Central cabinet, and later became chief minister again. His son, Naveen, has been chief minister since 1998.

... contd.