Ten candidates lag behind NOTA in vote share

BARGARH:While BJD secured a landslide victory in Bijepur by-election, 10 candidates other than BJP, Congress and the ruling party failed to secure more votes than ‘None Of The Above’ (NOTA) on their own.As per the results of the by-poll declared on Wednesday, BJD’s Ritarani Sahu got 1,02,871 votes followed by BJP nominee Ashok Panigrahi (60,939 votes) while Pranay Sahu of the Congress came a distant third by securing only 10,274 votes. As many as 1684 went to NOTA while the 10 candidates garnered a total of 5,948 votes.

This is for the first time that Congress forfeited its the security deposit for failing to secure 15 per cent of the total votes polled in an election in Bijepur Assembly segment. Earlier, the party had either won the election or notched up the second place.

One of the 10 candidates who had thrown their hats in the ring, RPI (A) nominee Debahari Harpal contested the by-poll to keep the party afloat in the Assembly segment. Sources said Independent candidate Pramod Kumar Chhatar had been asked to contest the by-elections to divide votes in an area by a particular party. While the RPI (A) candidate secured 905 votes, Chhatar managed to secure only 456 votes.

Among the other Independents, while some had expected to get monetary offer to withdraw their nomination, others were dummy candidates of major political parties to escape poll expenditure ceiling. Besides, there were some who were bitten by the election bug and hoped to get into the hall of fame by contesting the by-poll.