India, April 20 -- Naveen Patnaik's election as the president of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) for the ninth time offers a reading of the problems nagging the party for some time now. That Patnaik, at 78, remains the party's choice for leadership underlines the failure to let the second rung of leadership evolve. The attempt to position bureaucrat-turned-politician VK Pandian as Patnaik's successor was shelved after the BJP ran a successful campaign targeting Pandian's Tamil origins.

The challenges before the BJD are many. It was the party of office in Odisha from 2000 to 2024. Despite its protestations of being equidistant from the Congress and the BJP, the BJD had little hesitation in playing ball with the BJP, having once been part of the...