The politics of Baleswar is very different from rest of the coastal districts as here the number of conscious voters is high, whose voting often is tactical. No measure of emotional talk or allurement can have any impact on them. Hence, it is hardly possible to forecast the outcome.
In the last elections, although the Congress could win the Jaleswar Assembly seat, yet Srikant Jena emerged victorious in a triangular fight trouncing ruling BJD-NCP consensus candidate Arun Dey who could manage to get 2,74,988 votes against Jena’s 3,13,888 .Then sitting MP Karabela Swan was in third position with only 2,19,908 votes.
Although the ruling BJD, in the last general elections, won the Assembly seats of Bhograi, Basta, Sadar, Badasahi and the newly formed Remuna, yet it was an uphill task for its MP candidate Dey to register a win. While, Jaleswar seat was won by Debi Prasanna Chand of Congress, Nilgiri seat was retained by Pratap Sarangi of BJP although he contested the elections as an Independent candidate. In the 2009 elections, the BJD had seat adjustment with the left and the NCP for Jaleswar, Soro and Nilgiri.
For Jaleswar, it was a severe setback for the ruling party as BJD-CPM candidate Sisir Hui could get only around 7,000 votes against 20, 251 votes by rebel BJD and Independent candidate Gourgopal Das.Debiparasanna Chand had emerged victorious from the seat taking advantage of the split of vote of the BJD. Similarly in Nilgiri, the former CPM MlA Pradita Panda was the candidate of the alliance. In a four cornered contest, he could poll 32,469 votes. Here Pratap Sarangi had emerged the winner. The other prominent contestants who lost were Congress’s Diptikanta Mohapatra and rebel Congress candidate Kartik Mohapatra.
Similarly, in Soro the BJD-CPI candidate Jaykrushna Mallick could get only 11, 318 votes and had to be satisfied with a third position.Surendra Parmanik, who fought the elections for the first time, won with a margin of just about 360 votes defeating BJP’s Parsuram Dhada.