Sundargarh: Talsara Assembly constituency in Odisha’s Sundargarh is likely to witness a three-way fight in the upcoming elections in Odisha.
The segment has been a Congress bastion for long with the party having won the seat six times in a row between 1995 and 2014. However, it not only lost Talsara to BJP but also finished third in 2019 elections. BJP’s Bhabani Shankar Bhoi won the seat by polling 60,264 votes while BJD’s Stephen Wilson Soreng finished second with 44,076 votes.
While the BJP has renominated Bhoi from the seat, the BJD has gone for Binaya Kumar Toppo, who was its candidate in 2014 elections. The Congress initially named former captain of Indian hockey team Prabodh Tirkey as its nominee from Talsara but soon replaced him with Debendra Bhitaria. Congress Odisha on-charge Ajoy Kumar had then said that a decision to cancel his ticket was taken as he was not active in the constituency despite his nomination. Tirkey has since resigned from the grand old party and joined the BJP.
While Bhoi, who had defeated Soreng by 16,000 votes in the last elections, is wooing voters for his second consecutive victory, Toppo is also leaving no stone unturned to create history since BJD has never won a election here. The regional party’s performance 2022 panchayat elections when it had won all Zila Parishad seats from here has given him the hope to make an impact in the upcoming elections. The entry of former MLA Prafulla Majhi, who won the seat thrice in 2006 byelection, 2009, 2014 on Congress ticket, has bolstered the BJD’s prospects in Talsara. He joined the Conch party in 2021.
Congress, on the other hand, is making all efforts possible to regain the lost grounds with Bhitiria, a former government employee belonging to the Bhuiyan community. He had unsuccessfully contested as sarpanch from Subdega panchayat in February 2022. He joined Congress in December 2023.
His candidature is also being seen an attempt by the grand old party to secure the votes of the dominating Bhuiyan community since out of 14 elections held so far, Bhuiyan candidates have won 13 times.
From 1980 to till his death in 2006 late Gajadhar Majhi had won the seat five times for Congress with the sole exception of 1990. After that his son-in-law Prafulla Majhi won it thrice. In 2014, Majhi almost scraped through with a narrow margin of 1,438 votes over his nearest BJD rival Binay Toppo with a negative vote swing of nearly seven per cent against 2009 elections.
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