BHUBANESWAR : With heavyweight leaders from BJD, BJP and Congress in fray from the Assembly seats, the Bhadrak Lok Sabha constituency will be a battle for prestige for the three major parties.
The constituency has assumed immense significance for the BJP this time as the party state president Manmohan Samal has entered the fray from Chandbali Assembly seat. As BJP is determined to fight the elections with the intention of ousting the Naveen Patnaik government, it is expected the saffron party headed by Samal will leave no stones unturned to wrest the Lok Sabha seat and a majority of Assembly segments.
BJP sources said the result from Bhadrak will be watched by the central leadership as the state unit led by Samal had opposed the reported move for an alliance with the ruling BJD arguing that the performance of the saffron party will be much better this time. BJP sources maintained Samal and his team of Assembly candidates must prove their worth first in the home district of the state president. In Dhamanagar, BJP’s young and talented MLA Suryabanshi Suraj is contesting again.
The BJP has this time repeated Avimanyu Sethi, son of former union minister and BJD leader Arjun Charan Sethi from the seat. The margin of defeat of Sethi, who had polled more than 4.84 lakh votes in 2019, was only around 29,000. Sethi was defeated by Manjulata Mandal of BJD who had polled over 5.13 lakh votes.
Sources said BJP has a chance of winning the Lok Sabha constituency with better poll management. Apart from the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the party leaders should work hard and harness all the resources in a better manner, a BJP leader added.
It will, however, not be a cakewalk for BJP as the BJD is quite strongly entrenched in the Lok Sabha constituency except in one or two Assembly segments. The party had won six out of the seven Assembly segments in 2019. Several strong candidates like Byomakesh Ray from Chandbali and Bisnubrata Routray from Basudevpur have been renominated by the ruling party. But Bhadrak, Bhandaripokhari and Soro (SC) segments have emerged as sore points for the party.
The ruling party has exchanged Assembly seats between senior leader Prafulla Samal and Sanjeev Mallick. While Samal will contest from Bhadrak, Mallick has been fielded from Bhandaripokhari. The party dropped sitting MLA Parshuram Dhada from Soro who has since joined BJP.
Congress has fielded a senior leader and former MP Ananta Prasad Sethi from the seat. Besides, veteran Congress leader and former state president Niranjan Patnaik is also contesting from Bhandaripokhari Assembly segment again this time. Patnaik though unsuccessful against Prafulla Samal of BJD had polled more than 61,321 votes in 2019. Samal had polled over 70,000 votes.