Bhubaneswar: Odisha’s ruling Biju Janata Dal on Thursday registered its sixth bypoll win since 2019 assembly polls after its candidate Barsha Singh Bariha defeated Bharatiya Janata Party’s Pradip Purohit by over 42,000 votes in the Padampur assembly bypoll.
Barsha Singh Bariha, 29, daughter of late MLA Bijay Singh Bariha, whose death in October this year necessitated the bypoll, won by a margin of 42,679 votes, far more than the winning margin of her father in the 2019 assembly polls. Bariha, a Binjhal tribal, won a record 58% votes while Purohit secured 37.5% votes. The Congress, which ended up with over 30,000 votes in the 2019 assembly polls, received just about 3,500 votes.
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik, who travelled to the constituency in the run-up to the election to address two meetings, said he went to the assembly segment to back the candidate because BJP leaders kept on attacking a woman who had lost her father. “Winning or losing in an election is a different issue. But dishonouring women like this is highly condemnable,” said Patnaik.
BJP candidate Pradip Purohit was hugely disappointed. “We had hoped to win the bypoll by a margin of 5,000 votes. We will certainly review booth-wise data and other issues,” said Purohit.
{{/usCountry}}BJP candidate Pradip Purohit was hugely disappointed. “We had hoped to win the bypoll by a margin of 5,000 votes. We will certainly review booth-wise data and other issues,” said Purohit.
{{/usCountry}}Though BJP held on to its vote share secured in the 2019 election, the collapse of Congress and the transfer of its votes to BJD sealed its fate.
The Padampur bypoll battle, perhaps the last before the 2024 assembly polls, was crucial for the ruling BJD after the opposition retained the Dhamnagar assembly seat in last month’s bypoll. The BJD had been on the defensive after its candidate lost to BJP’s Suryabanshi Suraj, the 27-year-old son of Dhamnagar MLA Bishnu Sethi by nearly 10000 votes.
To ensure the victory of his party candidate, Naveen Patnaik deployed dozens of ministers and MLAs in the constituency, getting them go for door-to-door campaigning. He also promised to make Padampur, a sub-division, a full-fledged district in 2023, and announced cash incentives for Kendu leaf pluckers, who form a sizeable number in the constituency.