BHUBANESWAR: The Naveen Patnaik juggernaut continued to march on with absolute dominance in Odisha as the BJD steamrolled through the opposition BJP and Congress to register convincing victories in the bypolls to the two Assembly seats of Balasore Sadar and Tirtol on Tuesday.
The ruling party wrested the Balasore seat from BJP despite the latter having played the emotional card by nominating Manas Kumar Dutta, the son of sitting MLA Madan Mohan Dutta whose demise necessitated the by-election.
That the BJD had fielded a new face Swarup Kumar Das in the face of serious discontent within the district party unit over the choice made no difference as he rode off to a victory over Dutta by a margin of 13,351 votes. Das secured 84,097 votes while Dutta polled 70,746 votes.
In the Tirtol seat, BJD candidate Bijay Shankar Das, son of deceased MLA Bishnu Charan Das, won by a huge margin of 41,703 votes against his nearest BJP rival Rajkishore Behera. While Das polled 88,310 votes, Behera got 46,607 votes.
The Congress finished distant third in both the seats. While Congress candidate in Balasore Sadar seat Mamata Kundu polled 4,983 votes and forfeited her deposit, its nominee in Tirtol, Himanshu Bhusan Mallick got 28,778 votes.
The bypolls results have once again demonstrated the supremacy of BJD in Odisha. The BJP has been left with much to ponder over. The results from an Assembly seat in a district where the saffron party not only commands mass base but also comes under the Parliamentary constituency of Union Minister Pratap Sarangi, could not be more disappointing. The party had left no stone unturned to retain the seat with top leaders including Sarangi and his senior colleague in Modi Ministry Dharmendra Pradhan along with several MPs campaigning for Dutta.
However, the party not only lost the seat, its vote share also came down from 47.26 per cent in the 2019 polls to 43.58 percent. Similarly, in Tirtol, the party polled 27.92 per cent of the votes as compared to 30.9 per cent in 2019 Assembly elections.
The electoral machine of the BJD proved more effective in Balasore even as the Tirtol result was almost a foregone conclusion. In his bid to snatch the seat, Naveen Patnaik deputed more than 100 ministers, MLAs, MPs and senior leaders to Balasore, who camped there for over a month to ensure victory in both the constituencies. The organisational push from the top overcame the formidable ground-level discontent that was reflected in the suspension of three-time MLA from the seat Jiban Pradip Dash for anti-party activities just days after the polling in Balasore.
The problem before Congress is different as it continues be rejected by the voters. Sources in the party maintained that the bypoll results will force the party leadership to think why it is being rejected by people time and again. The candidates of the party are found struggling to retain their deposits even though that a spirited campaign was launched in both the constituencies.
Chief Minister and BJD president Naveen Patnaik congratulated the winners and also thanked the party workers for the hard work which resulted in victory in the bypolls.