BHUBANESWAR: The Puri Lok Sabha seat will be a battle to watch this election with the ruling BJD and the BJP leaving no stone unturned to bag the constituency that is home to one of the four dhams in the country.
With a rich political history, though the constituency has been a stronghold of BJD since its formation, the BJP has made significant inroads in recent years, posing a serious challenge to the dominance of the regional party.
Puri saw a tight fight in 2019 when BJP fielded its national spokesperson Sambit Patra, one of the most visible faces of the saffron party in the national media against three-time MP and BJD candidate Pinaki Misra. The latter though had a big scare through the counting process when Patra seemed to lead till the later stages when he managed to scrape through and win the seat by a slender margin of 11,714 votes.
Patra, a greenhorn in electoral politics till then proved himself on debut, as the BJP, which was considered an also-ran party in the seat increased its vote-share by over 25 per cent. If the party’s performance was mainly attributed to the Modi wave, the efforts of Patra in campaigning, even as he was nominated just before the elections, did not go unacknowledged.
This time, BJD has replaced Misra with retired IPS officer-turned politician Arup Patnaik, who had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 LS elections from Bhubaneswar. And, the party banks heavily on its development initiatives for Puri, especially the grandiose Srimandir Parikrama project, to sway voters in its favour.
It will be Hindutva and religious politics that holds centrestage in Puri this time. Even as BJD continues to enjoy a strong support base and expects that the Srimandir Parikrama project surrounding the Lord Jagannath temple may give party the much needed traction, the BJP has been actively working to expand its influence, capitalising on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s guarantee of development and the Hindutva factor.
Former Mumbai top cop Arup, who has been parachuted to Puri this time, may be relying on the welfare schemes and the newly unveiled projects to sail through, but Patra won’t be a push-over. In fact, he enjoys the advantage of remaining connected to the constituency and the people all through the last five years despite his defeat. While the MP Misra was missing in action, Patra has traversed the nook and corner to reach out to the voters, both in the urban and rural segments. His articulate communication skills and strong Hindutva image have made him a key figure in shaping the BJP’s narrative in the region.
Of the 17 elections held since 1952, while Congress and BJD have won six times each, BJP is yet to taste electoral success in this prestigious constituency. The Communist Party of India (CPI), Samyukta Socialist Party and Janata Party have won once each in 1957, 1967 and 1977 while the Janata Dal emerged victorious twice in 1989 and 1991.
The Congress has fielded Sucharita Mohanty from the seat. A scribe-turned politician Mohanty had secured 25 per cent votes in 2014 and was defeated by Misra by a margin of 2.63 lakh votes. She was replaced by Satya Prakash Nayak, also a scribe, in 2019. Nayak finished a distant third and managed to bag only 3.9 per cent votes.