KENDRAPARA: While all attention is on the big fight in Kendrapara Lok Sabha constituency, the Kendrapara Assembly segment has also turned into a prestige issue for the ruling party, where Finance Minister Sashibhusan Behera is trying his luck.
Even though the Assembly segment is considered to be a pocket borough of the ruling BJD, the senior Minister is facing one of the toughest electoral challenge of his life because of the ‘outsider’ tag. Besides, Congress nominee Ganeswar Behera, also a former minister who had unsuccessfully contested the last polls, has a substantial support base in the seat. Sashibhusan may ultimately sail through because of the strong anti-Congress nature of the constituency.
However, the people are aggrieved that a local candidate was not fielded by the BJD from the segment. The Finance Minister, who represented Jayadev seat of Bhubaneswar in the outgoing Assembly, was denied renomination from there as BJD put up former MLA Arabinda Dhali from the segment. Sashibhusan was a Rajya Sabha Member of the party from 2010 to 2014.
At a tea stall in Jamdhara on the Kendrapara-Cuttack main road, the consensus among the locals was that Sashibhusan may win as the ruling party is leaving nothing to chance. But they maintained that a local candidate should have been preferred.
While the ruling party denied ticket to sitting MLA Kishore Chandra Tarai, former MLA Sipra Mallik, who won from the segment in 2009 elections and also an aspirant, was also overlooked. In the last two polls, Ganeswar lost in close fights. He polled 46,505 votes (39.19 per cent) against 62,436 (52.16 per cent) of Sipra in 2009 elections. Similarly in 2014 polls, Ganeswar garnered 59,606 votes (43.01 per cent) against 65,037 votes (46.93 per cent) of Kishore.
Political observers maintained that the vote share of Ganeswar is likely to improve further in this election and he may end up even winning from the seat. As the BJP has only a nominal presence, there will be a direct fight between BJD and Congress in this Assembly segment.
The BJP has renominated Sunakar Behera from the seat. Sunakar had polled only 9,981 votes (7.2 per cent) in the 2014 elections. However, as there is an undercurrent of support among youth for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the vote share of Sunakar is likely to increase this time.