BHUBANESWAR: With president of Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee Niranjan Patnaik losing from both the Assembly seats, the grand old party seems to be proceeding towards complete marginalisation in the State.
Barring some spirited fight by some leaders at the local level individually, there is no good news for the party from the 2019 polls in which its tally is going to be confined to single digit. Latest trends suggest that the party is leading in only nine Assembly seats which includes Balangir in which Leader of the Opposition Narasingh Mishra is ahead of his BJD rival Arkesh Narayan Singhdeo and Jatni from where former minister Suresh Kumar Routray has won.
However, the Congress still remains to be a force to reckon with in the undivided Koraput district from where opposition chief whip Tara Prasad Bahinipati is again going to make it to the Assembly, though by a slender margin. Congress candidates were also ahead of their rivals from the Koraput and Pottangi Assembly seats.
Though from the initial rounds of counting it seemed that Congress will draw a blank in the Lok Sabha polls, party’s candidate from Koraput seat has established a slender margin according to the latest reports. In the neighbouring Nabarangpur seat also, party’s candidate Pradip Majhi gave a tough fight to Ramesh Majhi of the BJD.
In two other Lok Sabha constituencies Kalahandi and Sundargarh, Congress candidates were in contention till the last and there was triangular contest in both the seats. While in Kalahandi Lok Sabha seat, Congress candidate Bhakta Charan Das polled over three lakh votes, George Tirkey also garnered 2.61 lakh votes in Sundargarh though he finished third behind Union Minister Jual Oram and Sunita Biswal of BJD.
However, elsewhere in the State, mainly coastal Odisha, Congress votes seemed to have been transferred to either BJD or BJP. Congress had a strong presence in Kendrapara Lok Sabha constituencies from where the party candidate had polled nearly 2014 polls. However, in this election, the same candidate Dharanidhar Nayak is not likely get one lakh votes.
The fate of Congress candidates seems to be similar across coastal Odisha. Though detractors of the OPCC president Niranjan Patnaik point towards wrong poll management by the state leadership, already a revolt is brewing in the party rank and file.
Several senior leaders of the party maintained that the party’s fortune cannot be revived unless there is a thorough change.