Koraput turns its back on Giridhar and family

Koraput: Former chief minister Giridhar Gamang, who had represented the Koraput Lok Sabha constituency nine times beginning with the 1972 election, is fast losing ground in the seat reserved for tribals.
The family had pinned their hopes on Giridhar’s son, Shishir, who had contested on a BJP ticket from the Gunupur assembly seat. He, however, lost the seat to BJD’s Ragunath Gamang dealing a bigger blow to the family than the party. Many observers feel that Giridhar’s family no longer wields the kind of influence that it once did.
“I was not given the organisational freedom during this election. My suggestions were overlooked for which the party lost all the seven assembly seats under the Koraput LS constituency,” Shishir said.
Giridhar’s wife, Hemabati, too had represented the Koraput LS seat in 1999 when he had vacated it after becoming the chief minister.
Giridhar could not contest this election as the saffron party had decided not to give tickets to people above 75 years of age. Giridhar and his son had switched over to BJP in 2015.
The family’s debacle in electoral politics started in the 2009 polls in which Giridhar, then a Congress candidate, lost the Koraput Lok Sabha seat to BJD’s Jayaram Pangi. In the same year, his son lost the assembly election from Gunupur and his wife from Laxmipur, both on Congress tickets.
Giridhar was defeated again in 2014 by BJD’s Jhina Hikaka, while his wife swiched over to BJD after being denied an election ticket by Congress. But she too lost the assembly polls from Laxmipur.
A political observer said, “Their successive defeats can be attributed to their growing distance from the politics at the grass-roots level. As the family shuffled between Bhubaneswar and Delhi, they lost touch with the people in their own constituencies.”