The Congress suffered its worst defeat in Baleswar district. The party, which had won two Assembly seats and the Parliament seat in 2009 elections, lost them all.
Soro and Jaleswar seats were with the Congress, apart from the Baleswar lok Sabha seat. Congress’s Soro MlA had crossed over to the BJD prior to this election, while the Jaleswar Congress MlA lost to the BJD.This time Mrutuynjay Jena was Congress nominee for the Soro seat, but he lost it to BJD’s Parsuram Dhada. Dhada registered a victory margin of nearly 5,000 votes. In Jaleswar, BJD’s Aswani Patra trounced Congress’s Debi Prasanna Chand by a margin of about 34,000 votes.
The BJP failed to cash in on the Modi wave. Though BJP’s Gobinda Jena won the Remuna reserved seat, its MP candidate and two-time MlA Pratap Sarangi was defeated on whom the party had a high expectation.Sarangi stood in the second slot, while industrialist turned politician Rabindra Jena of the BJD won the seat by a margin of over 1.42 lakh votes. Jena got over 4.33 lakh votes and Sarangi 2.91 lakh votes. Congress’s Srikant Jena remained in third position with about 2.77 lakh votes.
The BJD could retain Bhograi, Basta, Simulia and Sadar Assembly seats while it added to its kitty Jaleswar, Nilgiri and Soro seats.
Ananta Das of the BJD won for the third successive term in Bhogarai, defeating Congress’s Satyasiba Das by margin of about 20,000. Despite all odds, BJD’s Nityananda Sahu could hold the party’s forte in Basta by routing his nearest rival of Congress Jaynarayan Mohanty.
Interestingly, in a multi-cornered fight, Jiban Pradip Dash of BJD won the Baleswar Sadar seat for the second time in a row. He secured over 47,000 votes defeating nearest rival Madanmohan Dutta of BJP by a margin of over 9,000 votes. Veteran Arun Dey who contested for the seat from Congress slipped to the third position with only 28,612 votes.
Simulia seat was captured by Jyotiprakash Panigrahi, son of sitting MlA Parsuram Panigrahi. He won it by defeating Congress’s Padmalochan Panda by a margin of around 8,000 votes.Soro reserved constituency result was a jolt to the Congress as it lost its 30 years old bastion. In Nilgiri, Sukanta Nayak of the BJD registered a comfortable win by nearly 14,000 votes over his nearest rival Susama Biswal of the BJP.