Bhaskar Parichha
Bijepur Assembly by-poll results are out. As expected BJD’s Rita Sahu has won the seat by a margin of 97994 votes defeating her immediate rival Sanat Gadtia of BJP. The Bijepur Assembly segment comes under the Bargarh Lok Sabha seat and went to the polls for the third time in less than two years. Bijepur witnessed a high voltage electoral tussle and was turned into a political hotspot as dozens of leaders from the three main parties camped there to fine-tune their strategies.
After the results, it is pretty clear that the voters showed their maturity once again. Being the seat of the chief minister and Biju Janata Dal supremo Naveen Patnaik which was vacated just days after winning it in the April-May election, the by-poll assumed special significance for the opposition BJP and Congress too. As results have shown, Congress is nowhere in the picture with its candidate Dilip Panda getting just 5871 votes.
For the ruling BJD, it had become a prestige seat. Several ministers in Patnaik’s government and senior leaders slept outdoors to canvass for the official candidate. One interesting aspect of the Bijepur by-election was that BJP was keen to snatch this seat from BJD. Because of the party’s impressive performance in western Odisha in the Lok Sabha polls, the expectation was not unjustified. But the votes polled by the BJP candidate shows that the BJD has a complete walkover.
The party had roped in a number of national leaders for the campaign. In the triangular contest in Bijepur, the main fight was of course between the ruling BJD and the BJP. More than 2 lakh eligible voters will pick up an MLA to represent it.
Interestingly, Rita Sahu had won from Bijepur as a BJD candidate in 2018 by a margin of over 41,000 votes when the by-poll was held in the constituency following the death of her husband and then Congress MLA Subal Sahu. In 2019 by-election she got 40000 more votes than CM Naveen had got in the 2019 general elections.
Bijepur has traditionally been a BJP stronghold. In the 2017 Panchayat elections, the Hindutva party had done phenomenally in this western belt. Even in the 2019 Bargarh Lok Sabha election, Suresh Pujari had won handsomely here.
Three days before he vacated the Bijepur seat in May, Patnaik had announced a Rs 1,330-crore package for the constituency which included plans to provide pucca houses to 34,000 households. This seems to have clicked with the voters. They were convinced that even if Bijepur will not be represented by the Chief Minister his choice of Rita Sahu will be equally effective.
Bijepurhas now become a prestigious assembly segment by default, and the development works announced by the CM will undoubtedly be geared up after the results.