The Congress, the principal Opposition party, seems to be losing its space to the BJP in Odisha. The BJP is acting aggressive and making efforts to capture the space. Where is your party heading?

As of now, the Modi wave is there. But the votes polled by the BJP in terms of percentage was less than that of the Congress. The BJP had secured 21 per cent votes, the Congress share was 26 per cent. As a political party, the Congress has its members across the state and the country. But the BJP has not opened its account in many parts of the country, including Tripura, Mizoram, Sikkim, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. They are pushing their hidden agenda. But no one knows their exact ideology. They are trying to push their ideology in a clandestine manner, through a back door. But they will not succeed. 

But the question is about giving away your space to the BJP… 

It’s a perception. They are expecting that they will increase their space. The Prime Minister is a bundle of lies. Every day, he tells lies and talks like a panchayat-level leader. His magic has started waning. People have lost their faith in him and this is evident from recent elections. The party lost the urban body elections in Gujarat and Assembly polls in Delhi, Bihar and Maharashtra (where the party does not have a majority). Their presence is confined to the Hindi belt only. In the rest of the country, be it South or North-East, they are yet to make their presence felt. In Odisha, it’s a different game altogether. The state has had strong leaders such as Biju Patnaik and JB Patnaik. The Congress has several leaders but somewhere, we failed to project a state-level leader after JB Patnaik. Alternative leadership did not grow because of JB’s towering presence at the helm of affairs. At least, we have leaders, though not as tall as that of JB and Biju. But this is not the case with BJP. It cannot capture the Congress’ space.

During the UPA regime, people used to allege that chief minister Naveen Patnaik had made a tacit understanding with the Congress. Now, people are saying that he has a secret pact with the BJP. Don’t you think Naveen is a smart politician?

He is chief minister of the state. The question of smartness does not arise here. Our country has a federal structure. The central government has to have good relations with the state governments and an understanding with the chief minister, who enjoys constitutional power. One cannot ignore the chief minister of a state. There are the administrative necessities on the part of a central government. But let me make it clear that the UPA had no political understanding with Naveen as he now enjoys with the BJP.

How can you make this charge against BJD, which is raising its voice against the BJP-ruled government at the Centre? 

The way the investigation into the deposit-collection scam has been delayed is ample testimony to their tacit understanding. We have noticed that so far no tangible action has been initiated in the deposit-collection case. Even in the mining scam, Justice M.B. Shah Commission had pointed out how more than Rs 60,000 crore had been looted. People have forgotten it. Not a single arrest has been made so far. But in the case of the coal scam, a number of people were put behind bars and lot of cases were lodged (during the UPA regime). Non-action of the NDA government on this front clearly indicates that they have an understanding with the BJD.

There is public perception that people from your party are among the beneficiaries of the mining scam…

People from all the political parties are in the mining business. If someone does anything wrong, he should be punished following the law. The law should take its own course. But the question is why the state and the central governments are not taking any action on this front. They know their party men are also guilty. The BJP is speaking of the Congress Mukt Bharat (Congress-free India). Then why is its government not taking steps against them (Congress)? 

The UPA government had launched several welfare schemes. But, the BJD had appropriated them by projecting those as their projects. But, during the NDA regime now, we see that the BJP is not letting the BJD do that… 

The BJP does neither have a programme nor do they speak about labourers, children, women or the downtrodden. They simply say “achhe din” and “Congress-mukt Bharat”. There is no change in the basic structure of the programmes and schemes initiated by the Congress during the UPA regime. We had introduced program-mes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, National Rural Health Mission, Right to Information (RTI) and Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) that changed the face of India. They are merely trying to change the names of the program-mes. In place of JNNURM, they are now talking of smart city. But they could not do anything to MGNREGS, which had earlier been criticised by the Prime Minister. The RSS — Rumours Spreading Sangh — has successfully maligned our party. In 2011, they had outsourced Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and Ramdev to fight against us, to counter us. They don’t have a programme at all. We had Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, now they have changed it to Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Not only Odisha, a number of state governments have appropriated our schemes, but our organisation could do little. I admit that we failed to propagate our programmes. The Congress workers became complacent and we have paid a heavy price. As the BJP has no programme of their own, they are banking on our program-mes. They make some changes here and there.

In the Lok Sabha, the Congress had supported BJD leader Bhatruhari Mah-tab’s resolution in support of special category status to Odisha. What is the Congress’ stand on Odisha’s demand for a special category state?

Several states such as Odisha and Bihar are demanding special-category status. But the Centre has its guidelines and they have their own way of sanctioning it. Once they fit into that (the guidelines), steps are initiated to give a state that status. Our party supports Odisha’s demand for being a special-category state. 

If the Congress supports the demand, why didn’t it grant the status during the UPA regime? The BJD has been consistently demanding this for a long time.

That’s not true. When the Raghuram Rajan Committee gave a clear picture of Odisha in terms of backwardness, the state did not press its demand effectively. It should not be just a political demand. In fact, the BJD had failed to raise the demand the way it should have been.

You were talking about the deposit collection scam. The involvement of a minister (Sanjay Das Burma) was raised first by Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra. But initially, he did not get the required support from the party. We notice that the BJP is now taking up the issue more aggressively than the Congress. 

Lulu is a Congress leader and he has done his job. We have lodged our protest. What do you mean by aggressiveness? Do you think that we should burn buses? We are working on a plan to take the issue to the entire state. 

It was alleged that the Congress had miserably lost the last elections because party tickets were sold out to people ignoring deserving candidates.

These are baseless allegations. We are in the 21st century. If someone has a specific allegation, he should come forward and lodge a complaint. At the India International Centre, we had sat for two days and decided on the names sent by the PCC. The scrutiny committee also scrutinised the lists. The candidates were selected from the four names shortlisted and not out of the blue.

As in charge of the state, you have been regularly visiting Odisha. But the Congress workers are demoralised. How do you plan to revamp the party? 

We have three years before we face the electorate. We will have to build the party’s structure first. We will reorganise the Congress at the block level and then at the constituency level. We are now organising padyatras (foot march) and then our executive committee will meet and chalk out specific programmes. You cannot write off a party. Of course, we have some organisational weakness. We will try to rectify them and stage a comeback.

What led to the situation that the Congress is in right now? 

Neglecting the organisation. We neglected the organisation. During the UPA regime, it is true that some ministers did not give due respect to the organisation. That’s the only failure for which we have had to suffer a lot. We also failed to project our success stories. Changing the president just before the election was also a mistake.

When a new PCC president takes over, no one gives him time and space. The present PCC chief Prasad Harichandan is no exception. People have started pulling him down. How long will this continue?

The Congress is one of the oldest parties. It’s natural that the party will have some old-age related diseases. The older we grow, more the diseases...

One of those diseases might kill you…

That’s part of the game. In a democracy, freedom of speech and dissent are present. It is essential for a democracy. Despite all these things, the Congress will continue to fight and uphold the unity and integrity of the country and its social and economic values.

There are complaints in every party that the younger generation is being denied opportunity in the party setup…

We have made a generational change by appointing Prasad, a man of high intellectual calibre, as the PCC president.

Do you think he has been able to deliver?

Gone are those days when a single leader mattered. Now there should be a collective leadership. As far as my experience goes, despite all odds, he is trying to build consensus in every decision he is making.

A section of people are demanding that those who had left the Congress should come back to the party fold…

Those who believe in Congress’ ideology and have faith in the leadership of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are always welcome to the party.

What do you think are the failures of the Naveen Patnaik government?

This government has failed to deal with the deposit-collection scam, mining scam and maintain law and order. If you analyse different committees’ reports, one will find that Odisha’s position is almost at the bottom in terms of development despite the fact that Odisha is one of the richest mineral-bearing states.

We have noticed many leaders encourage their sons and daughters to enter politics. Will your children will join politics?

I only have one daughter. She is now doing MBA after completing her engineering. I am not against the children of politicians joining politics. 

CONGRESS VETERAN

A fighter from his young days, Hariprasad was president of his college union. He was in MES College in Bangalore (1972-73) and then SJRC Law College, Bangalore (1978-79) 

Born and brought up in Bangalore, he is now a Rajya Sabha member

He is one of the general secretaries of the party and is currently looking after party affairs in 17 states 

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN HAD YOU NOT BEEN A POLITICIAN?

I am a commerce graduate. I would have become a chartered accountant. After my graduation, I joined the law school but could not complete it because of political compulsions. I also had the option to pursue a career as a lawyer.