Naveen Patnaik, Most Popular CM In Home State With 71.1% Approval Rating

Bhubaneswar: Naveen Patnaik has been voted the most popular Chief Minister in Home State in the 2022 edition of the India Today-CVoter biannual Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll.

In the poll, respondents in every state were asked to rate their own chief minister.

The CM of Odisha emerged at the top with 71 per cent of 2,743 respondents giving a thumbs up to Naveen Patnaik, followed by West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee at 69.9 per cent and CM of Tamil Nadu M K Stalin at 67.5 per cent.

Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray 61.8 per cent approval rating, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan 61.1 per cent, Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal 57.9 per cent, Assam’s Himanta Biswa Sarma 56.6 per cent, and Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel 51.4 per cent.

Notably, chief minister of only one of the states ruled by the BJP or its ally touched or crossed the 50 per cent mark.

In January 2021 poll, Naveen Patnaik was ranked as the best performing chief minister at the state level.

The MOTN survey, however, revealed that 58 per cent of respondents were very satisfied/satisfied with the performance of the Modi government and close to 63 per cent rated his personal performance as outstanding/good, a drop of 15 per cent since August 2020, before the outbreak of COVID-19.

However, 21.1 per cent of respondents still feel that good handling of the pandemic is one of the biggest achievements of the NDA government. This is in contrast to the August 2021 edition when COVID handling was dubbed as its biggest failure.