Bhubaneswar: Party hopping has begun in Odisha with the stage set for a high-stakes triangular contest in Nuapada Assembly constituency, where a bypoll is scheduled for November 11.
On Thursday, former Nuapada NAC Vice Chairman and BJD Leader Mahesh Nial joined the Congress. Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Bhakta Das welcomed him to the party.
The grand old party, which is making efforts to re-establish its influence in the state, has already named Ghasiram Majhi as its nominee. The 63-year-old law graduate is an old hand and has a support base of his own, which was evident in the 2024 assembly election when he got more than 50,000 votes as an Independent to finish second behind BJD MLA and former minister Rajendra Dholakia, whose untimely demise on September 8 necessitated the by-election. The then OPCC president Sarat Patnaik had then finished fourth. The Congress is eying a win in the bypoll with Ghasiram’s 50,000 plus 15,000 party votes, which Sarat Patnaik got in the last elections.
The BJP and BJD are yet to announce their candidates for the bypoll.
While BJD senior vice-president Debi Prasad Mishra subtly indicated that the party would field Dholakia’s son Joy as its candidate in an attempt to cash in on the sympathy wave, BJP’s core committee meeting to discuss the potential candidates for Nuapada is scheduled for Thursday. The BJP’s probable list include Jadumani Panigrahi, who contested as an independent in 2019; Sonia Jain, chairperson of Khariar Road NAC; former state BJP president and ex-MP Basanta Panda and his son Abhinandan Panda, the party’s 2024 nominee from the seat.
Since 2000, the seat had been represented thrice by the late Dholakia as a BJD legislator and once as an Independent, while former state BJP president Basanta Panda secured two victories.
In the 2024 assembly election, Dholakia of the BJD had secured 61,822 votes, while Congress rebel Ghasiram Majhi, who contested as an Independent, polled 50,941 votes, emerging as a close runner-up. The Congress’s official nominee, Sarat Pattanayak, lagged far behind with 15,501 votes, while the BJP candidate Abhinandan Panda finished third, managing just over 440,814 votes.