Odisha: 3-Member Congress Team To Assess Jharsuguda Bypoll Loss

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Bhubaneswar: A three-member committee will visit Jharsuguda and submit report on the reasons behind decline in the party’s vote share to the All India Congress Committee (AICC), Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) president Sarat Patnaik said on Monday. 

This came amid allegations of transfer of votes leading to the party’s humiliating show in the Jharsuguda bypoll.

Congress candidate Tarun Pandey lost his deposit, bagging only 4,496 votes (2.56%), which was drop from 10.68 per cent in 2019. The party lost 14,327 votes which went straight to the BJD account, whose vote share touched a whopping 60.93 per cent. As the BJP increased its vote share from 30.04 per cent in 2019 elections to 33.25 per cent in the bypoll, senior leader Samir Mohanty attribute the saffron party’s defeat to “an unholy alliance of the BJD-Congress did.” The complete shift of Congress votes to BJD was a recurrence of what happened at Padampur last year, he claimed.

Notably, the grand old party has witnessed a sharp fall in its vote share and number of seats in successive elections since 2004, highlighting its decline. The party’s vote share plummeted from 33.7 per cent in 2000 when it lost power to BJD to 16 per cent in 2019. The performance of the party in urban and rural elections has been dismal. It has lost deposits in seven of eight by-elections in the state since 2019 with Brajrajnagar bypoll, where the party secured second position, being the only saving grace.

Congress legislature party (CLP) Narasingh Mishra attributed the humiliating defeat in Jharsuguda to lack of leadership and weak organisation while Jatni MLA Suresh Kumar Routray said that the party fought the bypoll in a half-hearted manner for which the votes got transferred.