Interview Times 
New Delhi: With the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) going their separate ways in Odisha, all eyes will be on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to see if he continues his praise of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik next time he goes to the state to campaign.
On 5 March, during a visit to Jajpur to inaugurate central projects, Modi had called Patnaik a “popular CM” and also praised the legacy of his late father, former Odisha chief minister Biju Patnaik.
with the BJP deciding to go solo. And now, contrary to popular perception, in about 50 percent of the Lok Sabha seats where both the BJD and the BJP have announced their candidates, the two parties have put up strong candidates against each other — laying to rest any notion of a ‘friendly contest’.
Take, for instance, the Puri seat, where the BJD has pitted former Mumbai police commissioner Arup Patnaik against BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra. In 2019, Patnaik, a native of Puri, had contested from Bhubaneswar and lost to the BJP’s Aparajita Sarangi by 23,839 votes. Patra, who contested from Puri, lost to the BJD’s Pinaki Misra by more than 11,000 votes.
An Odisha-based political analyst who did not want to be named told ThePrint that Puri has tremendous sentimental significance for the state. In 2019, the BJD won five of the seven assembly segments that form part of the Puri Lok Sabha constituency.
