The Communist Party of India is now precariously positioned vis-à-vis the ruling Biju Janata Dal, its ally, in Orissa.
While the party does not want any displacement of local people in Dhinka, a part of the Posco project site near port town Paradip in Orissa Jagatsinghpur district, the BJD headed by CM Naveen Patnaik is hell-bent on pushing
through the `52,000-crore steel plant project, the country’s largest foreign direct investment proposal, at any cost. CPI activists led by local Jagatsinghpur LS me-mber Bibhu Prasad Tarai and former MLA Narayan Reddy are now camping in the project site, strongly backing the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti that has been resisting the government attempt for forceful eviction of the local villagers.
After condemning the BJD’s “blind-industrialisation” and “anti-people” economic policies for over a decade, the CPI took everybody by surprise when it entered into an alliance with the BJD just on the eve of last general elections. Its bonhomie with the ruling party was not restricted to the bilateral arrangement only. Apart from extending its own support, the party drafted CPI (M) and Nationalist Congress Party into the league to form a a grand-alliance to fight against the Congress and BJP, — leaving political observers at their wit’s end.