Congress hits new low in November 3 bypoll in Odisha

BHUBANESWAR: As it starts candidate scouting for Pipili assembly constituency which fell vacant after the death of BJD strongman Pradip Maharathi, Congress performance in the November 3 bypolls indicates that the grand old party is plumbing the depths of its despair in the State.

In Balasore Sadar seat, the party fielded a new face Mamata Kundu but ended up getting only 3.07 per cent vote share, down from 12.45 per cent in the 2019 assembly elections, recording a nine per cent drop.

BJD too fielded a new face Swarup Kumar Das who polled nearly 13 per cent more votes despite the emotional card played by BJP which had Manas Kumar Dutta, son of deceased MLA Madan Mohan Dutta, as its candidate.

The saffron party held on to its ground in the face of better election management by ruling BJD and got 43.58 percent of votes, a four percent drop from last polls.

Senior Congress leader Anant Prasad Sethi said that the entire Congress vote was transferred to BJD as the workers were unhappy with the candidate. A drop of nine percent votes of Congress and four percent from BJP makes 13 percent increase in BJD vote share.

There was an undercurrent of resentment among Congress workers over candidature of Kundu who had contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Balasore Parliamentary constituency on an AAP ticket and secured merely 2,664 votes.

“The very basis of Kundu getting the ticket bypassing several aspirants begs an answer,” alleged Sethi, a former Lok Sabha member. He claimed that Kundu was also an aspirant for BJD ticket from Balasore Sadar seat in 2019 elections. 

Last year, Congress had fielded Manas Ranjan Das Pattnaik who polled 19,704 votes (12.45 per cent) and was an aspirant for the party’s ticket for the bypoll but was ignored. Interestingly, the 2019 Lok Sabha candidate Navajyoti Patnaik, son of OPCC chief Niranjan Patnaik, did not show up during campaigning.

In Tirtol too, Congress candidate Himanshu Bhusan Mallick had to struggle to retain his deposit by securing 28,778 votes.