BHUBANESWAR: Women candidates will grab a major slice of the pie in the elections held to Odisha’s 21 Lok Sabha seats. As many as five women candidates from BJD and two of BJP are leading over their opponents in their respective Lok Sabha constituencies. If the leads continue till the end of the counting, at least seven women from the State will represent their respective constituencies in the lower house of Parliament in its 17th session.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s woman card, which advocated at least 33 per cent reservation for women in the Parliament worked wonders for BJD in the Lok Sabha polls. The Chief Minister had fielded seven woman candidates in the elections to the Lok Sabha of which, five are ahead of their rivals.
The party’s Koraput candidate Kausalya Hikaka, spouse of former BJD MP Jhinna Hikaka, is engaged in a close fight with Congress’ Saptagiri Ulaka who is leading by just 625 votes. However, party candidate from Sundargarh, Sunita Biswal, daughter of former Chief Minister Hemananda Biswal, is trailing by over 2.16 lakh votes. Union Minister Jual Oram is leading from the seat.
BJD candidate for Aska, Pramila Bisoi was ahead of her BJP counterpart Anita Subhadarshini by around 2 lakh votes while the party’s candidate from Bhadrak Parliamentary constituency Manjulata Mandal was also leading over BJP’s Abhimanyu Sethi by 32,566 votes.
Another prominent women’s leader of the party Rajashree Mallick, who was given a ticket by Naveen to take on BJP’s Bibhu Prasad Tarai in Jagatsinghpur Lok Sabha constituency, is also leading from the seat by an impressive over 2.25 lakh votes.
Another candidate Sarmistha Sethi, who initially was engaged in a close battle with BJP’s Amiya Kanta Mallick in Jajpur Lok Sabha constituency, was leading by 1,02,792 votes. Similarly, Chandrani Murmu, contesting on a BJD ticket from Keonjhar Lok Sabha seat was leading by over 65,000 votes.
On the other hand, two women candidates of BJP from Bhubaneswar and Balangir Lok Sabha seats-Aparajita Sarangi and Sangeeta Kumari Singh Deo are also emerge winners. Aparajita is leading over BJD candidate Arup Mohan Patnaik, the former police Commissioner of Mumbai, by 21,087 votes, while Sangeeta is leading by around 3,927 votes.