BHUBANESWAR: The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) on Friday retained the Brajrajnagar assembly seat in Odisha with a margin of 65,999 votes, restoring the strength of the Naveen Patnaik government to 113 in the 147-member assembly.
The by-poll, held on May 31, was necessitated due to the death of the BJD’s incumbent legislator Kishore Kumar Mohanty. The party fielded his wife Alaka Mohanty, who received 93,790 votes, which was 61% of the total valid votes. It was an improvement over the results in 2019 when BJD candidate, her husband, secured about 80,152 votes, about 49.1% of the votes polled.
Friday’s victory for the BJD candidate was on expected lines.The BJD hasn’t lost a single by-poll since the 2019 assembly elections when BJD chief Naveen Patnaik returned to power with 112 seats to start his fifth term as the chief minister.
It was a reflection of this confidence that Patnaik did not campaign for the party candidate in the by-election. In by-elections held in the state since 2019, the BJD has retained Bijepur, Tirtol, Pipili assembly seats and snatched Balasore Sadar from the BJP.
The results announced on Friday, however, came as a setback to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Radharani Panda, who won the seat in the 2014 state elections and was the runner-up in the 2019 elections. In Friday’s counting of votes, Radharani Panda was pushed to the number 3 spot by the Congress candidate, former forest minister Kishore Chandra Patel, and lost her security deposit.
{{/usCountry}}The results announced on Friday, however, came as a setback to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Radharani Panda, who won the seat in the 2014 state elections and was the runner-up in the 2019 elections. In Friday’s counting of votes, Radharani Panda was pushed to the number 3 spot by the Congress candidate, former forest minister Kishore Chandra Patel, and lost her security deposit.
{{/usCountry}}The Congress was the runner up in the 2014 elections as well and ceded the seat to its alliance partner, the Communist Party of India in 2019.
A BJP leader blamed the lack of adequate boots on the ground and poor election management for the humiliating loss despite efforts by Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan who spent two days in the constituency to canvass for the candidate. The Congress, on the other hand, was able to mobilise its party workers after the party leadership in Delhi replaced Niranjan Patnaik as head of the state unit with Sarat Patnaik, a Congress leader said.