Bhubaneswar: BJD president & Leader of Opposition Naveen Patnaik on Friday announced his visit to Komna in Nuapada Assembly constituency on November 3 to campaign for party candidate Snehangini Chhuria.
“Jay Jagannath, dear brothers and sisters of Komna. I will visit Komna on November 3. I will meet you all and speak to you,” Naveen said in Sambalpuri dialect, through a video message.
He ended the video with his signature line, “Apana Mane Khusi Ta?”, a crowd favourite from his 2019 campaign trail, and Juhar, a traditional greeting in western Odisha.
According to sources, he will visit Nuapada again on November 7 to seek votes for the two-time Attabira MLA Churia in this high-stakes battle of prestige and legacy.
The Nuapada by-election, scheduled for November 11, is set to witness a triangular fight among the ruling BJP, opposition BJD and Congress, all of whom have already launched intensive campaigns for their candidates.
This twin visit, something Naveen had avoided during bypolls in recent years, is being seen as an attempt to show his intent to go for a direct clash with Chief Minister Mohan Majhi, who is leading the BJP charge, and Bhakta Charan Das, the state Congress chief.
The by-election was necessitated following the demise of sitting BJD MLA Rajendra Dholakia on September 8 and his son Jay Dhoakia switched sides to contest on BJP ticket, leaving the regional party in a quandary. Pushed to the wall after its first choice Jay joined the BJP ahead of the by-election, Naveen tried to pull a rabbit out of the hat by nominating Churia, who was the party’s observer for Nuapada district, for four years, as the party candidate, hoping to capture a good portion of the SC and backward class votes who have a sizeable presence in the constituency and keep its women’s vote bank from completely going to the BJP kitty courtesy the Subhadra Yojana.
With Jay on its side, the BJP is hoping to wrest the seat from BJD, which the Lotus party had won twice in 2000 and 2014 with former state president Basanta Panda as its candidate, by riding on the sympathy wave.
Congress nominee Ghasiram Majhi, on the other hand, is a veteran tribal leader with a support base of his own and this was evident in the 2024 polls when he got more than 50,000 votes as an Independent to finish second behind Rajendra Dholakia, who retained the seat with 61,822 votes. 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. The grand old party, which is seeking to revive its fortune in the state, is eyeing a win in the bypoll with Ghasiram’s 50,000 plus 15,000 party votes, which Sarat Patnaik got in the last elections.