Sambalpur Lok Sabha politics: 3 parties in conflict over candidate selection
Sambalpur: As the general elections are approaching, there is a conflict between the three major parties regarding the selection of candidates for the Sambalpur Lok Sabha constituency. The concerned parties have started planning whether they will give tickets to the candidates of the last time or whether they will bring a new face to the field.
In the last 2014 general election, Sambalpur Lok Sabha BJD candidate Nagendra Pradhan defeated BJP’s leader Suresh Pujari. The victory of Nagendra, the leader of the Angul region, was supported by the votes of 2 assembly constituencies Chendipada and Ashtamalli of Angul district. However, in the 2019 election, BJD candidate Nalinikant Pradhan, who was born in Angul district and spent a lot of time in Sambalpur, got more than eight million votes, although the main reason for his defeat was the lack of expected votes from Sambalpur district. BJP candidate Nitesh Gangdev got 9,162 votes more than Nalinikanth and entered the Lok Sabha for the first time. After the election, Nitesh, who was torn by family disputes, was not able to see him. Most of his time is spent in Devagarh or Delhi. So, BJP will not want to field him again from here. After repeated defeats in various elections, Bargarh will definitely be the first choice for Suresh Pujari of Sambalpur who has finally tasted victory from Bargarh Lok Sabha constituency.
In such a situation, another leader of the opposition party, Jai Narayan Mishra, has been accepted into the Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat, which consists of seven assembly constituencies of Sambalpur, Devagarh and Angul districts. Due to health issues, Jay Narayan will never agree to leave his safe Sambalpur constituency to contest the Lok Sabha elections. However, it is said that the party will be in an advantageous position if the BJP nominates Dharmendra Pradhan, who spent many years in Sambalpur during his youth. He will succeed in splitting the BJD vote in the two assembly constituencies of his home district Angul. Before the reorganization, he was once the MP from Deogarh Lok Sabha constituency. Devagarh now falls in the Sambalpur Lok Sabha constituency. However, it is up to him to choose between Dharmendra Sambalpur and his home Lok Sabha constituency Dhenkanal.
Sharat Patnaik, the Congress candidate who was in third place after getting only 12.09 percent votes, is now the president of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee. Congress organization is very weak in the Sambalpur Lok Sabha area. In such a situation, since Sharat has to handle the election responsibility of the entire state, he will definitely look for a safe seat for himself.
After the 2019 elections, the defeated candidate Nalini Babu was found to be more active in the Sambalpur Lok Sabha constituency than MP Nitesh Gangdev. However, since the Panchayat elections, he has been seen to be more active in the politics of the eight-member assembly constituency than in Sambalpur. Seeing the status of BJD organization in Sambalpur district, it is called ‘as many leaders as there are groups’. In such a situation, it is difficult to estimate who the party will nominate. However, along with Nalini Pradhan, former MP Nagendra Pradhan, Sambalpur District Council President Kumodini Nayak, names of many leaders including Rohit Pujari and youth leader Sanjit Mohanty are in the news.
