Mr. Patnaik was born on 16th October at Cuttack. H went to the famous Doon School of Dehradun and passed his secondary examinations from there. He completed his graduation from Delhi University in 1967. Navin stepped into politics after his father's death. Very soon he emerged as a popular leader and won the parliamentary elections in 1997 from the Aska constituency and became a member of the Lok Sabha. As a parliamentarian he highlighted the problem of water shortage in Orissa. He traveled extensively through the drought prone areas of the state and introduced new tube wells, reactivated the existing village wells, organized clinics and mobile medical vans.
He was the member of the Standing Committee on Commerce and the Library committee of the parliament. The year when he became a MP, Navin formed a new party and named it the Biju Janata Dal Party after his deceased father. His party won the 2000 assembly polls and he was elected as the new chief minister of Orissa. He won the elections again in 2004 and sworn in as the Chief minister for the second time.
Some of the former chief ministers of Orissa are:
- Bishwanath Das
- Biren Mitra
- Biju Patnaik
- Nabakrishna Choudhury
