ROURKELA: The Talsara Assembly segment has been considered a traditional stronghold of the Congress but the going doesn’t seem to be smooth for the grand old party in 2019 as a close triangular fight is a certainty.
The seat which has been retained by the Congress for the last six Assembly elections since 1990 had given enough indications on slipping grip of the party in 2014. The trend is all set to continue in the forthcoming polls as the BJD and BJP are poised to give a tough fight.
From 1980 to till his death in 2006 late Gajadhar Majhi had won the seat five times for Congress with the sole exception of 1990. After that his son-in-law and sitting Congress MLA Dr Prafulla Majhi won it thrice. However, in the last elections, Dr Majhi almost scraped through with a narrow margin of 1,438 votes over his nearest BJD rival Binay Toppo with a negative vote swing of nearly seven percent against 2009 elections. The BJP candidate Santosh Amat was also not far behind and came third by only 4,417 votes less than Dr Majhi. The party had notched a positive vote swing of over 7.60 percent over 2009.
However, the BJD and BJP are both bogged down by their internal issues. The ruling party in the State had pulled off a coup of sorts when Amat switched side from the BJP nearly two years ago. But, the momentum has petered out as he has not been able to click with the party. Amat was recently dropped as Chairman of Sundargarh Special Development Council. Speculations about Amat contesting from BJD for Sundargarh Lok Sabha seat also looks bleak.
Alternatively, accommodating Amat as Talsara nominee may boomerang for BJD as Toppo, a Catholic Christian has a strong base among the decisive Christian population.
Talsara has 11 big parishes, each having 500-700 Catholic Christian families. Together with Protestants and Baptists the total Christian population is around 40,000-50,000 while total voters in the seat number around 2.01 lakh. BJP insiders claimed that Amat’s departure had no impact on the Saffron party. In February 2017, the BJP had trumped the BJD and Congress by winning five of the seven