--As ruling party faced tough fight from BJP
In the recently held BeMC polls, though the BJD got the majority and bagged the Mayor post, but the voting pattern shows a clear anti-incumbency trend, unearthing large scale dissatisfaction of urban voters against the ruling party.
Out of 42 wards, ruling BJD won in 30 wards (including 3 elected unopposed); followed by BJP which won seven wards; Independents won four, while Congress could get only one ward.
BJD Mayor candidate Sanghamitra Dalai, a lawyer by profession who started her political career as a Councilor from ward No.21 of Bijipur, won the poll.
The most significant part of the election is that, the BJP’s vote share has increased significantly. While the BJP had won only one Corporator seat in 2015 and drew a blank in 2013, this time the number of seats has risen to seven. Significantly, in all these seven wards, the BJP’s Mayor candidate Dr Sabita Suar, an educationist and a prolific writer, who contested for the first time, got unprecedented support from the public. She gave a tough fight to her BJD rival.
According to political observers, the erratic distribution of tickets by the ruling BJD; ignoring some senior leaders of the district while distributing tickets to candidates; deplorable road, drainage and sanitation condition in many parts of the city and filing of nomination of a larger number of dissidents against the party nominees ultimately proved a boon for the opposition BJP.
For instance, the repeated media reports about the worst road and drain conditions of Gandhinagar area which the BeMC did not pay heed to for years forced the intellectual residents to choose BJP candidate Ranjita Behera for the post of Corportator. Some political analysts are of the opinion that if the percentage of turnout of voters had been 70-75%, it would have been difficult for BJD to win the Mayor post. Sources said that, in many wards, the BJP nominees lost the election only by a margin of 100-200 votes.
Another important feature of the election is that, the nominee of Aam Admi Party (AAP) for the position of Mayor C Priyanka performed well. As a result, AAP remained in the third position pushing the main opposition Congress to forth position. While AAP Mayor nominee got 7,435 votes, Congress candidate Manju Rath could fetch only 6,768 votes.
