Bhubaneswar: After initial lead, BJP national vice president Baijayant Panda is trailing in Kendrapada Lok Sabha seat in Odisha.
Anshuman Mohanty, son of Nalinikanta Mohanty, a close aide of Biju Patnaik and a former minister in Naveen Patnaik’s cabinet who joined the Congress after being expelled from the BJD, is head in the parliamentary constituency as per the latest ECI trends.
Kendrapada is a battle of legacy for BJD, which it has never lost since the 1998 Lok Sabha polls. Biju Patnaik, after whom BJD has been named, won the LS seat thrice, in 1977, 1980 and 1984.
Baijayant was a BJD Rajya Sabha member from 2000 to 2009. Subsequently, Naveen offered him the pocket borough Kendrapara Lok Sabha, which he won twice. He, however, could not taste victory in the last polls after joining the BJP in 2018 following a fallout with Naveen.
While there has been an upswing in BJP’s popularity since 2019, Baijayant has also won some goodwill having intervened to bring back bodies of migrant workers belonging to the district who died abroad, and also helping native workers based in the Gulf. He also claimed to have brought railway lines to the district to ensure industrial growth in his report card.
To retain the Lok Sabha constituency, the BJD president made organisational changes and also welcomed into his party fold Opposition leaders, who had unsuccessfully contested the Assembly elections in 2019. Congress turncoat Anshuman had won from Rajnagar Assembly seat in 2014 but lost the polls five years later. Besides BJD’s strong base, he may benefit from his father’s organisation in Rajnagar, which the latter represented for seven consecutive terms.
The regional party has fielded Aravind, son of another Biju’s close aide and former minister Bijoy Mohapatra, from Patkura Assembly segment under Kendrapada LS seat. Bijoy, a founding member of BJD, had represented Patkura for four consecutive terms till 2000. He is also known to have a strong base in Mahakalapada.
In his election rally, Naveen also accused Baijayant of having betrayed him and the people of the constituency while BJD leader V K Pandian alleged that the former MP harboured ambitions of replacing Naveen as Chief Minister.
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