Bhubaneswar: Can Ghasiram Majhi influence the outcome of election to Nuapada Assembly seat in Odisha?
Ghasiram, a tribal leader and former Congress candidate, has entered the poll fray as an independent. He was denied a party ticket after OPCC president Sarat Pattanayak reportedly insisted on running as a candidate from the Assembly seat.
They are pitted against sitting BJD MLA Rajendra Dholakia and BJP’s Abhinandan Panda, the son of Kalahandi MP Basanta Panda.
Nuapada has not been a favourable ground for the Congress, which has won the seat only twice since Independence despite several party bigwigs visiting the area to attract voters. Sixty-eight-year-old Sarat was elected from Balangir Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket in 1991 and 1996 when Nuapada was under this parliamentary constituency.
Nuapada, however, became an Assembly constituency under Kalahandi Lok Sabha seat after delimitation of constituencies before 2009 elections.
Sarat, too, has since faced successive defeats in electoral battles. He did not contest the 2009 elections and finished third five years later. In 2019, he shifted to Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat but the result was far worse as he not only finished third but also lost his security deposit. It is for the first that Sarat will be contesting from an Assembly seat.
Ghasiram, on the other hand, had helped the grand old party to improve its vote share in the last two elections from 16.43% in 2009 to 27.44% in 2019. He finished third after BJP’s Basanta Panda, the winning candidate, Rajendra Dholakia of BJD in 2014 and climbed to the second position five years later when Dholakia wrested the seat from BJP.
The tribal leader had also fought the Assembly polls from the seat in 2009 as a BSP candidate.
As an independent candidate, Ghasiram can make the poll calculation of other parties go wrong too since he enjoys the support of tribal groups in the constituency. The Zilla Adivasi Sangha, a local tribal outfit, has announced its support for Majhi, making the Nuapada polls interesting.
To make matter worse for BJD, Dholakia is facing opposition within the party. BJD general secretary Saroj Sahu and president of Nuapada Biju Yuva Janata Dal Harish Chandra Panda left the regional party and joined BJP after raising banner of revolt, protesting against alleged corruption by the sitting MLA.
Dholakia first won from Nuapada as an independent in 2004, and returned five years later as a BJD MLA from the seat. He, however, lost to Basanta Panda of BJP in 2014 by less than 10,000 votes. His victory margin in 2019 against Congress’ Ghasiram was a little over 20,000 votes.
There also has been protests against the candidature of Abhinandan, who will be making his electoral debut from the seat which was once represented by his father. While the vote share of the saffron party improved by around 11% in 2014 when Basanta Panda won the seat, it lost 18.6% voters in 2019 elections with its candidate finishing third. It is also difficult to say whether the BJD leaders who recently shifted allegiance to BJP can help slit votes in favour of the saffron party candidate.
With two veterans, a greenhorn and a rebel, the Nuapada Assembly seat is poised for an interesting four-corner battle on May 13.
