Bhubaneswar: The BJP party’s first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha election is not quite encouraging so far as Odisha is concerned. The party has nominated mostly those candidates who had fought the Lok Sabha 2014 elections unsuccessfully.
In 2014 when the strong Modi wave was blowing throughtout the country, BJP’s MP cadidates in Odisha make it the Lower House. Anata Nayak(Keonjhar), Sangita Singhdeo( Bolangir), Rudra Narayan Pani(Dhenkanal), and Pratap Sarangi(Balasore) had to see the face of defeat. The only saving grace was Juel Oram, who could win the election from Sundergarh with a small margin. The party has repeated all these candidates this time. Will they able to make it in 2019?
Juel won the election by a margin of 18, 829 votes defeating BJD’s Dilip Tirkey, Olympians and former Indian hockey captain. Sangita Singhdeo lost by a margin of 1,04,229 from BJD’s Kalikesh Singhdeo. Rudra Narayan Pani was defeated by BJD’s Tathagat Satpathy by a margin of 1,37,340, Ananta Nayak lost to BJD’s Sakuntala Laguri by a margin of 1,57,317 and Pratap Sarangi lost the election to BJD’s Rabindra Jena by 1,41,825 votes. Rudra, Sangita and Ananta had also got defeated in 2009. It was in coalition with BJD, Sangita and Ananta had won 1998, 1999 and 2004 elections.
In the absence of a Modi wave, will they be able to make up the margins of over 1 lakh this time round.
The party has nominated two former MPs Baijayanta Panda(Kendrapada) and Balabhadra Majhi(Nabarangpur). Panda was two time Rajya Sabha member and two time Lok Saba member. Both Panda and Majhi had won the last election in BJD tickets. But, contesting this time with BJP tickets will they make it to the Lower House?
New faces in the list are Anita Priyadarsi(Aska), Bhrugu Bauxipatra (Berhampur) and Aparajit Sarangi (Bhubaneswar). While Aparajita, an IAS officer who had resigned from the country’s premier services to join BJP, is seriously campaigning in her constituency, Anita Priyadarsi, elder daughter of former finance minister Rama Krushna Patnaik, is a candidate for the constituency once represented in the Lok Sabha by her mother Kumudini Patnaik. Bhrugu is the son of former minister late Harish Chandra Bauxipatra. The fate of these candidates would be known only when the results would out.
