Naveen thanks voters, decries violence

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, while thanking the Bijepur voters for electing BJD candidate Rita Sahu by a huge margin of votes on Wednesday, remarked that peace loving Odisha people do not tolerate any incident of violence.

Patnaik was obviously referring to the BJP cadre-sponsored violence like hurling of shoe at him at a campaign meeting and a murderous attack on Minister Sushant Singh’s brother Subrat Singh in which Subrat’s car driver, a BJD worker, was killed.

On the other hand, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who led the BJP campaign for party candidate Ashok Panigrahi, said his party would have self-introspection to learn from the defeat in order to achieve successes in the 2019 general elections.

However, he stated that the results substantiated his party’s allegation that the BJD and the Congress had secret understandings.

Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly Narasingha Mishra said, “One has to accept the people’s mandate. We accept people’s mandate.”

Congress candidate Pranay Sahu said he was defeated because his party votes were diverted to other parties. He lamented that his party didn’t provide any financial support to him when the by-poll was fought by other parties on money power.