A resurgent Bharatiya Janata Paty (BJP) is poised to record a landslide victory in the Lok Sabha polls in Odisha as it is all set to secure a whopping 19 seats out of 21 at over 90 per cent strike rate as per the fag-end trend of counting.
The official results of two seats have so far been declared by the Election Commission of India with BJP bagging both. BJP’s Pradeep Purohit and Ananta Nayak defeated BJD contestants by a massive margin of 2.51 lakh and 97,000 voted from Bargarh and Keonjhar Lok Sabha seats.
Prominent among the BJP candidates leading include among others Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, BJP national vice-president Baijayant Panda, National spokesperson Sambit Patra, former Union ministers, Jual Oram and Pratap Sarangi, and BJP spokesperson Aparajita Sarangi.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) with 12 seats bagged the maximum number of seats, followed by the BJP (8) and the Congress (1). As the trend is likely to remain unaltered with its candidates maintaining a comfortable margin over their rival candidates, the political landscape in the eastern State has come under huge makeover given the fact that the party leading in 79 seats out of 147 Assembly seats is poised to form its maiden government in Odisha.
While Congress hit by a multiplicity of crises right defection to meager fiscal resources to fight polls has managed to maintain an ‘unbeatable’ lead to bag the Koraput seat for the second time, BJD’s plunge in parliamentary polls has taken a severe beating with the party struggling to lead only one seat. It was a huge dip from the 12 seats it had secured in 2019 polls.
Sensing distinct poll victory possibility ahead of the polls, BJP had embarked on a high-octane poll campaign lining up top heavyweights including PM Modi, National president, JP Nadda, Home Minister Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and a host of other national leaders, sitting chief ministers of BJP-ruled States to fire all cylinders to target BJD on Odia Ashmita or pride and contentious missing key episode of Lord Jagannath’s Ratna Bhandar (treasury) issues. The belligerent campaign seems to have paid rich dividends in wooing the voters to its side as the party is all set to win 19 out of 31 seats.
On the other hand, BJD, apparently hit by anti-incumbency after remaining in power for 24 years, was found on the back foot with LS candidates turned unequal to high-profile candidates fielded by BJP.
The regional party fought the toughest election ever since it was founded in the late nineties after the demise of legendary Biju Patnaik. Then, the State was a Congress bastion, and an anti-Congress outfit named after Late Biju Babu was formed to spoil the grand old party’s grip over the voters.
The BJP trained its gun at V K Pandian, close aide of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, alleging that Patnaik Government has been outsourced to outsiders by Tamil Nadu-born former bureaucrat. That apparently permeated into voters’ psyche to reject the outsiders’ influence in BJD if the trends of BJP surging well ahead of its fancied opponent are any indication.