By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: BJP on Tuesday got an absolute majority getting 78 MLAs in 147 members Odisha Assembly after the elections results were announced. BJP had earlier won 23 MLA seats in 2019 while tally rise to 78 in 2024.
Naveen Patnaik’s BJD stood second with 51 seats against 113 it had got in 2019 while Congress bagged 14 seats . As many as 3 Independent and 1 CPI(M) MLA candidates have also won.
Sarada Pradhan (Bulu) was elected as an independent candidate from the Mahanga seat of Cuttack district after defeating Ankit Pratap Jena of BJD by a margin of 7423 votes.
Similarly, independent candidate Bijaya Kumar Dalabehera has been elected from the Badamba assembly seat in Cuttack district. He defeated his nearest rival Debiprasad Mishra of BJD by a margin of 23,479 votes.
Another independent candidate, Himanshu Shekhar Sahoo won from Jajpur’s Dharmashala Assembly seat, after defeating BJD candidate Pranab Kumar Balabantaray by a margin of 4150 votes. Incidentally, these three victorious independent candidates were denied tickets by the BJP.
CPIM candidate Laxman Munda defeated BJD candidate Bhimsen Choudhury by a margin of 23,439 votes.
