The temptation to emerge as an independent regional player in the post-poll landscape may have prompted the Biju Janata Dal to end its 11-year-old partnership with the BJP in Orissa. But the development has now translated into grave implications for the saffron outfit at the national level, undercutting LK Advani?s prime ministerial ambitions and the NDA?s bid to reoccupy the Centre.

The divorce from the BJD has come just when the BJP leadership was congratulating itself for getting its coalition arithmetic right by sewing up alliances with the RLD in UP and the AGP in Assam. The development has not only upset the BJP?s calculations, it has also sowed doubt in existing as well as potential NDA allies over the BJP-led front?s prospects of getting the better of the UPA in the Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP has reacted with anger, immediately announcing withdrawal of support to the Naveen Patnaik government. ?I am shocked at the decision. Naveen Patnaik never indicated his dissatisfaction with the alliance,? party president Rajnath Singh said in his first response to the media. The party?s senior leadership will be taking stock of the situation late on Sunday night, after Advani reaches the capital from Dehradun, where he addressed a rally scheduled earlier. ?Our core committee will decide what is to be done,? national spokesperson SS Ahluwalia told FE on Sunday. ?We never expected this, that too from someone who has been such a good ally?, he said.

That the BJD was not keen to continue the alliance with the BJP was evident when it set out terms for the BJP that could not have been acceptable to the latter by far. Insisting on dismantling the 84:63 and 12:9 ratio for assembly and LS seats, the BJD also wanted to reserve the right of choosing the seats for the BJP.

Clearly, the BJD chief is convinced he will do better even without the BJP. ?We were stressing on the winnability factor but this did not work out. It is now clear that we will face the elections on our own,? Patnaik said after the talks failed.

The BJD was among those from the NDA to sharply criticise the BJP for declaring in its national council meeting in Nagpur last month that it will construct the Ram temple at Ayodhya, saying it was not part of the NDA?s CMP. The BJD, it appears, made up its mind after the outcome of the recent civic polls in Cuttack and Baripada, where it not only established supremacy but relegated the BJP to a handful of seats. The two parties contested the civic polls separately.

In the state assembly, the BJD, with support already being pledged by the Left, JMM and independents, is likely to scrape through. It has 61 members in the 147-member state assembly and needs 13 more to reach the halfway mark of 74.

The BJP leadership, however, will have to look into the larger impact of the break-up beyond Orissa. Some party leaders feel that the BJD may have taken a calculated decision to enhance Patnaik?s status as a regional leader but will be open to a post-election deal with the NDA. That is something the party will have to take into account only in a post-poll situation.

For now, the BJP will have to fight the race to emerge as the single largest party, ahead of the Congress. The break-up with the BJD means it will have to discount at least half a dozen seats from the state from its overall tally. In the last Lok Sabha elections, the BJD won 12 seats and the BJP seven.

The BJP will have to tread carefully with its other alliance partners in coming days. Allies like the JD(U) and Shiv Sena will use the Orissa development to their advantage in extracting more seats from the BJP. Advani and his aides will have to ensure that they neither succumb to fresh pressures of allies nor end up triggering another NDA split in Bihar or Maharashtra.