BJP’s Assembly decisions might be very costly for the party

The BJP would pay a heavy price if candidates for several Assembly seats are not chosen in unanimity. The Banki Assembly constituency is a striking example of party workers’ dissatisfaction with the candidate’s nomination.

The party chose Tusharakanta Chakrabarti, a member of the Baranga zilla parishad, over Subhransu Mohan Padhi, the party’s candidate for the 2019 elections and a major figure in Banki organization. The party workers have clearly not taken well to it.

Banki was a member of the regional party while the BJP and BJD were in an alliance. Since the constituency has been a Janata Dal stronghold since 1990, Padhi has been trying his luck from the seat since the coalition in 2009, but his attempts have been unsuccessful. Afterwards, Janata Dal was renamed as Biju Janata Dal.

“Padhi may have been the first option if winnability is one of the most important criteria for choosing candidates, since he has been with the BJP for over 20 years and has made a substantial contribution to the party’s expansion in the constituency. He significantly increased the BJP’s vote share from 8,056 in 2009 to 32,541 in 2019,” a senior party leader said.

Being a member of the powerful Banki family with a wide range of commercial ventures, Padhi is well-known in the area, but Chakrabati is unfamiliar to voters as a Baranga resident. The leader said that while Chakrabarti is wealthy and has commercial interests in real estate and small minerals, he lacks connections with the people in the Banki district.

“The BJP usually finds it difficult to win Banki, a seat where the Congress still has a sizable majority of the vote. Given that he had gained the support of several Congress organizations in the wake of rumors that former Congress MLA and party candidate for the seat, Debasis Patnaik, would be defecting to the BJD, Padhi might have put up a fierce battle against the BJD. It would now be challenging for the BJP to hold onto the vote share it had in the last elections, a Banki businessman living in the city said to The New Indian Express, requesting to remain anonymous.

The BJP Flag is flown in representational fashion.
Disagreement over candidates who might ruin Odisha BJP’s brew in several seats
Emerging as a prominent in student politics, Patnaik entered the 2000 election on a Congress ticket and lost to Pravat Tripathy of the BJD. But in 2004, he overcame Tripathy. He had been pushing for a BJD ticket because he had lost his previous two elections.

When it failed to materialize, he turned his attention to the BJP and gained the backing of his followers. Talks for an alliance between the BJD and the BJP started when he was talking with a few prominent BJP officials.

Even after receiving the go-ahead, Patnaik altered his plans to join the saffron party because he believed that the Banki seat would become part of BJD’s coffers if the coalition succeeded. Sources further said that he would now find it difficult to make up lost ground.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has selected Satya Sarathy Mohanty for the Assembly seat of Balikuda. This candidate was brought in from Delhi and put under pressure by party members to win the seat.