In the 2004 Orissa Assembly election, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had swept the state with the BJD winning 61 seats and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning 32 seats, giving the alliance comfortable majority in the 147-member house.

[3] The Naveen Patnaik government had been sworn in at the Bhubaneswar Raj Bhavan by Odisha Governor M. M. Rajendran in May 2004.

Seat-sharing discussions got underway between allies, after eleven years of partnership and nearly two full terms as the Orissa state government, the BJD snapped ties with the BJP in March 2009, blaming the latter for the 2008 violence against Christians.

[6] Thereafter, the BJP withdrew support to Government and Governor Murlidhar Chandrakant Bhandare asked Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to prove his majority in the Orissa Assembly.

[10] Despite fighting against both BJP & Congress, the BJD emerged victorious with more than two-thirds majority in the 147 member Legislative Assembly.