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Opinion Poll
Bhubaneswar (Orissa): Will battle -2009 could help Orissa to play a key role in national politics? With split in the 11-year old BJD-BJP alliance and mudslinging among party cadres in Congress, poll observers are keeping mum over the outcome of the twin polls slated for April 16 and 23.
Orissa is drawing national attention since the BJD-BJP alliance broke on March 7 this year. Till now, Naveen Patnaik led BJD is ahead in the race, while a revitalized BJP led by Suresh Pujari and upbeat Congress led by KP Singh Deo are being also geared up to face the voters.
The 2009 Lok Sabha elections will now witness mostly a triangular contest among the BJD, BJP and Congress, making it most difficult for both the BJP and also the ruling BJD to retain their supremacy.
With cracks looking wide open in both BJP led National Democratic Alliance and Congress led United Progressive Alliance, BJD's strength could be well tested in national politics as left backed Third Front closely taking over Naveen Niwas.
Since Congress and BJP going alone this time while BJD striking a pre-poll alliance with Pawar led NCP, Prakash Karat led CPI (M), AB Bardhan led CPI, everyone here waiting eagerly for May 16, the day, results are expected to come.
It was a fact that NCP chief Sharad Pawar may change his side but BJD if emerges winner, might play a key role to the Prime Ministerial ambitions of Dr Manmohan Singh, LK Advani, Sharad Pawar, Mayawati and at last not least, Lalu Prasad-Mulayam Singh led Fourth Front with the help of Ram Vilash Pawan.
During the 2004 Assembly elections, out of 147 seats, BJD had won 61 seats, while BJP had won 32. The Congress had won 38 seats. The non-Congress votes were polarized between the BJD and BJP, which had formed an alliance to form the Government on both occasions in 2000 and 2004.
The BJD secured less percentage of votes than the Congress in 2000 (29.40 per cent) and 2004 (27.36 per cent), but it was enough to help party to win 68 and 61 seats respectively.
Its alliance partner BJP cornered 18.2 per cent votes in 2000 and 17.1 per cent in 2004 as the party wrested 38 and 32 seats in the two polls respectively. In the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, BJD won 11 seats followed by seven of the BJP and two of the Congress.
The last two Lok Sabha elections in the State witnessed a virtually straight contest between the BJD-BJP combine. On one hand and the Congress on the other, in which the former had swept the polls bagging 19 of the total 21 seats in 1999 elections and 18 in 2004.
Interestingly, the Congress has succeeded in securing at least 30 per cent of the vote share in Orissa in every election except in the Assembly elections held in 1971.
However, though it cornered the highest percentage of votes on several occasions including in the 2000 and 2004 Assembly polls, the same did not translate into the required number of seats for forming the government.
The Congress vote share in 2000 was 33.78 per cent (26 seats), which marginally increased to 34.8 in 2004 with the number of seats won rising to 38.
BJP began its innings with 3.56% votes only. But in 1995, the late Biju Patnaik went all alone and lost due to the rise of BJP, which polled 7.88% of votes. BJP has grown rapidly since 1990s, more by consolidating the anti-Congress political forces.
BJD was launched in December 1997 when a large chunk of members of Janata Dal(S) broke away following the death of the legendary Biju Patnaik. BJD quickly decided that rather than compete with BJP for Opposition space, it could gain by aligning with the party.
The alliance virtually struck gold by winning a majority of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in 1998, 1999 and 2004 elections and forming the government twice after the assembly polls in 2000 and 2004, cornering 106 and 93 of the 147 seats.
In the last Assembly election, the win-loss margin was less than 2000 votes in 22 constituencies. In 2000, BJP s vote ratio was 18.2%, which came down to 17.11% in 2004. And for BJD it was 29.4% and 27.36% respectively.
These figures reveal that in 2004 BJD lost 2% and BJP 1% of votes. It will be trouble for Naveen if this 2% vote margin goes up to 10%. The political equations of 2004 and 2009 are different.
There is neither UPA nor NDA. In the last two polls, BJP had fought under Naveen's leadership. Now it has to fight alone. Congress now has under a new leadership whose popularity is yet to be tested.
Meanwhile, interestingly, BJD has topped the list while axing as many as 16 sitting MLAs out of its 59 in Orissa State Assembly. As far as estimation goes, 16 of the 59 sitting MLAs of the ruling party, BJD, were debarred from contesting either for Assembly or Lok Sabha elections.
Congress has not given tickets to 5 out of 38 sitting MLAs to the reasons, best known to them. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not debarred any of its 32 MLAs. But it is another matter that as many as 5 MLAs of the party, have changed sides for their own interest.
Out of the independents, who have supported BJD after elections and only two-- Pravat Kumar Biswal and Haji Md.Ayub Khan have been given BJD ticket? In this context, BJD has denied tickets to 16 MLAs including 2 Ministers Surendra Nath Nayak and Chaitanya Prasad Majhi. Those denied tickets, might create trouble for these three mainstream political parties.
In yet another significant development, a large number of independent candidates have entered in to the electoral fray in Orissa to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. Out of the total of 1288 candidates who were fighting the polls for 147 Assembly seats in the state, 371 were independents. Of the remaining candidates, 585 belonged to recognised parties and 332 from non-recognised parties.
Likewise, there were 35 independent candidates in the fray for the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state out of the total 157 candidates. Of the remaining nominees, 86 candidates were from recognised parties and 36 from non-recognised parties.
It is said that denial of party tickets to the aspiring candidates had led to an increase in the number of independent nominees this time around.
There were a total of 2, 71, 60, 572 voters in the State and 31617 polling booths had been set up to conduct the polls.
Everyone is waiting for the outcome of Lok Sabha seats like Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Aska, Kendrapara, Berhampur, Dhenkanal, Puri, Phulabani, Balasore, Balangir, Bhadrak, Sambalpur, Sundargarh, Jajpur, Jagatsinghpur and few other seats because of political importance.
