BHUBANESWAR: As the BJP has stepped up its campaign in a bid to wrest the Padampur Assembly seat in the bypoll to be held on December 5, BJD asserted on Thursday that the party candidate Barsha Singh Bariha will win with a much higher margin than 2019.
“The margin will be much higher. All the machinations of the BJP to mislead the people will not work in Padampur,” Sushant Singh, former minister and chief of the BJD’s election management group for the bypoll told TNIE.
Singh said that the BJD candidate is getting massive support during her campaign in every village and BJP’s negative propaganda on backwardness of the constituency, farmers’ issues and railway link has not really worked.
The former minister said he had challenged Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign if the BJP candidate Pradip Purohit is defeated and also announced that he would retire from politics if the BJD candidate loses. “Let us wait for the result of the bypoll,” he added.
The income tax raids were a sign of desperation in the BJP camp to intimidate the BJD rank and file and voters of the constituency, he said and added that this will have no impact on the final result. Businessmen on whose premises I-T raids were conducted are millionaires and pay income tax thrice the amount of the cash seized from them. Income tax department seized cash ranging from Rs 15 to Rs 20 lakh from them while they pay income tax amounting to around Rs 50 lakh to Rs 75 lakh, he added.
The senior leader, however, ignored the GST raids conducted on business establishments and residences of local BJP office-bearers across the constituency and even at Bargarh as a retaliatory measure. “We did not use (misuse) police or Vigilance as the BJD wanted a free and fair poll,” he said.
Despite talking about an increased margin of victory for the BJD in the bypoll, the former minister is aware that the result may go BJP way in case of a close finish. But he added that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s campaign in the constituency on Friday will have much impact and boost the party candidate’s chances. Singh maintained that Congress votes had played a major role in the victory of BJP candidate Pradip Purohit in the 2014 election. Congress leader Satya Bhusan Sahu who had polled over 49,000 votes in 2009 election did not contest and about 20,000 of his votes got transferred to BJP in 2014 leading to the victory of Purohit.
Congress votes will be divided this time too, he said and adding that BJD will gain from this. He said the BJP was nowhere in the scene in Padampur till 2014 and the party got a boost in 2017 after the panchayat election. But this time, BJD’s position is very strong and the party will definitely win the by-election,
he said.