BERHAMPUR: At Naveen Patnaik’s home district of Ganjam, BJD was on road to a total sweep as candidates were leading in the Berhampur and Aska Lok Sabha constituencies and all the Assembly segments under them except Sanakhemundi.
While BJD supremo Naveen Patnaik retained his home turf Hinjili Assembly seat, his party candidates were leading with comfortable margins against their rivals. Naveen fielded SHG leader Pramila Bisoi from his erstwhile Aska Lok Sabha constituency and also put up new faces in a majority of the Assembly segments. By 10 pm on Thursday, Pramila was winning with a whopping margin of 2,01,629 votes against her BJP rival Anita Subhadarshini.
Other new faces of the BJD - Bikram Panda of Berhampur, Manjula Swain of Aska, Latika Pradhan of Kabisuryanagar, Suryamani Vaidya of Khalikote and Subhash Behera of Chatrapur - were much ahead of the rivals in the electoral battle by the 13th round of counting.
Besides, senior party leaders Surya Patra is leading in Digapahandi, Srikant Sahu in Polsara, Purnachandra Swain in Sorod, Bikram Kesari Arukh in Bhanjanagar, Usha Devi in Chikiti and Pradeep Panigrahy in Gopalpur. However, the vote margin between Pradeep and his BJP rival Bibhuti Busan Jena was only 0.76 pc.
The Congress candidate Ramesh Chandra Jena was leading in Sanakhemundi with 51.04 vote percentage against his BJD rival Nandini Devi who got 34.49 pc of votes till 10.30 pm.
SCORES RISE
BJD supremo Naveen Patnaik retained his home turf Hinjili Assembly seat, his party candidates were leading with comfortable margins against their rivals
Naveen fielded SHG leader Pramila Bisoi from his erstwhile Aska Lok Sabha constituency and also put up new faces in a majority of the Assembly segments
By 10 pm on Thursday, Pramila was winning with a whopping margin of 2,01,629 votes against her BJP rival Anita Subhadarshini