Odisha: Parties in Sundargarh are playing it safe when it comes to gender equality
Although BJD is a supporter of women’s empowerment, the governing party has avoided fielding female candidates in Sundargarh district for the seven Assembly seats or the Lok Sabha seat. While the Congress has nominated one woman, the bitter rival BJD, the BJP, has fielded two female candidates for the Assembly elections.
Political parties are reluctant to field female candidates unless they are very confident in their chances of winning since the district has a terrible history of women running for office or winning them. Political analysts noted that the BJD did not take any chances in the face of challenging electoral dynamics. It has nominated six Assembly seats and the Sundargarh LS constituency has all male candidates. There will be a male contender for the remaining RN Pali as well.
Sunita Biswal, the daughter of former chief minister of the Congress Hemanand Biswal, was the BJD’s candidate for the coveted Sundargarh LS seat in 2019. However, she lost to BJP heavyweight Jual Oram with almost 2.23 lakh votes, making her election debut a disaster.
Kusum Tete, the incumbent MLA for the BJP’s Sundargarh Assembly seat, and Sebati Nayak, a resident of Bonai, are the two female candidates running this time. For the Sundargarh seat, the Congress has put forward its lone female contender, Sudharani Roudia.
Sebati is a member of the state executive committee of the party and the previous head of the Lahunipada panchayat samiti (PS), according to senior BJP politician Bonai Luthar Oram. Tete, on the other hand, does not need an introduction since she demonstrated her mettle with a victory in 2019. Oram said that she is a formidable opponent for the Bonai Assembly seat.
Raj Kishore Sarangi, the general secretary of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC), said that Sudharani was the chairman of the Hemgir PS from 2017 to 2022 and has sufficient expertise in grassroots politics. It is likely to be a triangular struggle for the Sundargarh seat with Sudharani in the mix, he said. After 17 elections for the Sundargarh Legislative Seat since 1951, Frida Topno became the first woman to be elected to Congress twice, in 1991 and 1996.
Although Kusum Tete and Sushma Naik, two more BJP lawmakers, were the only two women to win the Sundargarh Assembly seat as MLAs so far, Frida Topno had previously run and prevailed from RN Pali in 1985. There has never been a female lawmaker in the assembly constituencies of Talsara, Rajgangpur, Birmitrapur, Bonai, or Rourkela.
In the February 2022 panchayat elections, the governing BJD—which is leading the charge in promoting women’s reservation—fielded a sizable number of female candidates.
