The final six out of 21 Lok Sabha seats in Odisha will go to polls on Monday, alongside the remaining 42 out of 142 assembly seats. The Lok Sabha constituencies where polling will be conducted include Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Kendrapara and Jajpur.
The region going to the polls is considered a stronghold of the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which had won all six Lok Sabha seats and 37 of the 42 assembly seats in the 2014 elections.
But this time, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which performed well in the local body elections in 2017, hopes that it can build on that.
The most high-profile contest would be fought in the Kendrapara Lok Sabha constituency, where four-time member of Parliament Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda is contesting on a BJP ticket against Odia actor Anubhav Mohanty, the BJD candidate. Once family friends, Panda and chief minister Naveen Patnaik had a bitter fallout last year with the former quitting the BJD following growing differences with CM.
{{/usCountry}}The most high-profile contest would be fought in the Kendrapara Lok Sabha constituency, where four-time member of Parliament Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda is contesting on a BJP ticket against Odia actor Anubhav Mohanty, the BJD candidate. Once family friends, Panda and chief minister Naveen Patnaik had a bitter fallout last year with the former quitting the BJD following growing differences with CM.
{{/usCountry}}Jajpur seat is home to the mineral-rich Sukinda Valley, where 19 children died due to malnutrition in 2016, in Nagada’s villages.
The stakes are also high in the Balasore Lok Sabha constituency, where sitting BJD MP Rabindra Jena is pitted against Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) old-timer and a member of the BJP’s national executive, Pratap Sarangi. The Congress candidate is Navajyoti Patnaik, son of state unit chief Niranjan Patnaik, who had unsuccessfully contested the seat in 2004.
“By criticising Panda in past fortnight, the chief minister has made it a high-stakes battle. It’s evident that he thinks the former Kendrapara MP to be his biggest rival as of now. The verdict would affect Odisha politics one way or the other in the days to come,” said Mohammad Jani, a Kendrapara-based analyst.
The assembly elections has 342 candidates in the fray. Patnaik, in his fourth term as CM, contested from home turf Hinjili in Ganjam and a second seat, Bijepur in western Odisha, in the second phase of polling on April 18.