CUTTACK : The Salipur Assembly segment is set to witness a triangular fight between BJD’s sitting legislator Prasanta Behera and newcomers from BJP and Congress.
While Congress has nominated Aquib Uzzaman Khan from the seat, BJP has fielded Ollywood actor Arindam Roy. Both the newcomers are pitted against Behera who had won the seat in 2019 by polling 1,04,218 votes. While BJP’s Prakash Behera had polled 70,014 votes, Congress’ Rabindra Kar had to lose his security deposit as he managed just 5,565 votes.
However, it will not be a cakewalk for Behera who is facing locals’ ire over his failure to fulfil several assurances given by him in 2019 including setting up a bus stand, solving traffic and drainage problems and construction of a flyover on railway line in Tangi. This apart, Behera also has the task of resolving differences among party workers. The Vigilance raid on Salipur block and local rural development office came as a jolt to Behera.
On the other hand, BJP workers are in a dilemma after Prakash joined BJD and the party preferred Arindam Roy, an outsider, over local leaders like Rashmi Ranjan Parija, Kunja Mohan Sethi, Dibakar Pradhan and Satyabadi Chaini. While bringing all the disgruntled leaders and cadre along will be an ardous task for Arindam, it will also be difficult for him to cover all the 48 gram panchayats in the segment with just a month remaining for the polls.
After Congress’ miserable performance in 2019, Khan (32), an engineer by profession and hailing from Raisunguda locality undertook organisational activities in the segment. Khan’s hardwork paid off to some extent as Congress improved its performance in the Zilla Parishad elections by garnering 21,000 votes. The meeting of senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in the constituency on Sunday has also fuelled new enthusiasm among the party workers.
The Assembly constituency has around 43,000 voters from the minority community and 80 per cent of their votes are expected to go to Congress. At least 300 to 400 Muslim voters had joined the party during a Mishran Parba (inclusion ceremony) organised by Khan in different gram panchayats, sources said.