By Our Correspondent
PIPILI/BHUBANESWAR: With Pipili Bye polls now become a prestige issue for the Saffron establishments, which is strengthening its base in Lord Jagannath’s land of Puri, BJP National VP In Charge of Assam and Delhi, Baijayant ‘Jay’Panda on Sunday ventured into battle Pipili and held door to door campaign seeking votes for Party candidate Ashrit Patnaik.
Flanked by Party candidate Patnaik and Kendrapara BJP Leaders like Kishore Panda, Krushna Chandra Panda, Salim Khan , Jay Panda appealed to people of Pipili and Delang to vote for BJP and development.
The BJP National VP Panda, who has been camping at Guwahati for months to oversee Assem Assembly polls, took time and reached Odisha to campaign for Party’s Ashrit Patnaik, who happens to be BJP’s Puri president.
The BJP is not that weak in Puri district, where its candidates – Jayant Sarangi and Lalitendu B Mohapatra – defeated BJD stalwarts like Maheswar Mohanty and Sanjay Dasburma, respectively, in the 2019 general elections. This apart, BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate Sambit Patra also performed strongly in 2019 despite losing.
The outcome of the ensuing bye-elections in the Pipili assembly segment on 17 April will have little impact on Odisha’s political arithmetic. This is because the governing BJD’s strength in Assembly will go up to 114 if Rudrapratap Maharathy wins, and if BJP candidate wins, its strength will increase to 23 as it has been after the 2019 general elections.
Even if Congress candidate Ajit Mangaraj, who has been campaigning from isolation following testing positive to the COVID-19, wins the bypoll results will have no significant changes. The Congress presently has only nine members in the Assembly, and the party lost its principal opposition status to the BJP. Winning a single seat will also not help Congress to regain its leading opposition status.
