It’s but expected that all eyes are now focussed on the results of the February 24 Bijepur Assembly by-election to be announced on Wednesday. The outcome of the high-voltage poll campaign is particularly awaited with anxious moments by the main contenders, the BJD and the BJP, with the Congress seemingly placed third in the race.

Not only the political parties but the people at large consider the Bijepur verdict, though of a mere by-poll, as the forerunner of the scenario of the vast canvas of the general elections due next year. No wonder, therefore, the question who would win the constituency dominated the political scene ever since it fell vacant following the death of the incumbent Congress MlA.

Normally, the encounter would have been between the Congress and the BJD but for the BJP’s belated surge in Bargarh district, which includes Bijepur, in the Zilla Parishad elections last year.

The BJP not only won the Bargarh ZP, it too came out with flying colours in most of the ZPs in western Odisha.

The BJP’s success was, no doubt, conditioned by the party’s virtual all-India dominance spurred by Modi’s popularity.

The BJP’s rise as the second political force edging out the Congress in the State in the panchayat polls jerked Naveen Patanik and his BJD into a new strategy mode that seems to have been succeeding in arresting the saffron party’s growth process. This was, meanwhile, evident from some developments, including the BJD snatching a ZP seat from the BJP in a by-poll in Baleswar district.

In fact, the BJD’s seriousness in its efforts to win Bijepur was not so much as to wrest the three-consecutive-time Congress seat but really to checkmate the BJP’s influence in western Odisha.

Now, as the Bijepur vote count is to be universally watched with fingers crossed on Wednesday, political observers consider the BJD as the favourite with the BJP following it. And the important point the observers want to note is the length of the winning margin of votes.      

In an event of the BJD trouncing its new arch enemy, the BJP in Bijepur, the ruling party will look forward to the general elections with s robust confidence that will utterly frustrate the BJP’s avowed “120+ Odisha Mission”, meaning more than 120 seats in the 147-member State Assembly, the target that the party’s national president Amit Shah announced from rooftops during his visit to the State in September last year.