Bhubaneswar: The BJP on Sunday put a spanner in BJD’s winning stride in bypolls since the 2019 twin elections by retaining Dhamnagar Assembly constituency by a huge margin of 9,881 votes.
The BJP won it last time but MLA Bishnu Charan Sethi’s death led to this contest. The saffron party fielded his son, Suryabanshi Suraj, who garnered 80,351 votes while BJD candidate Abanti Das polled 70,470. Dhamnagar is considered a BJP stronghold with the saffron party, having won twice from the seat in the recent past with Manmohan Samal in 2004 and Sethi in 2019.
While the saffron party could cash in on the sympathy wave for Suryabanshi and extend the winning margin, the dissidence factor perhaps played a decisive role for BJD in this bypoll with Independent candidate and former MLA Rajendra Das wresting some votes from its kitty. He got 8,153 votes.
While BJP’s vote share was almost the same as in 2019, BJD’s dropped by 2.62% vote.
2022
Suryavanshi Suraj: 49.09%
Abanti Das: 43.05%
2019
Bishnu Charan Sethi: 48.47%
Rajendra Das (BJD): 45.67%
Reacting to the defeat, BJD president and Chief Minister said: “We have lost very few by-elections. I always respect the verdict of the people. MLA Bishnu Sethi died recently and he was quite popular. BJP held the seat for a number of years. His son was given the ticket. It was expected that they would win.”
The regional party had set a record by winning all five by-elections – Pipili, Brajrajnagar, Balasore Sadar, Tirtol and Bijepur – after assuming power for the fifth consecutive term in 2019.
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