With 36 hours left for voting in 66 urban local bodies (UlBs) scheduled to be held on September 19, the fortnight long high-pitched campaign ended at 5 pm on Tuesday with major political parties exuding confidence of capturing a majority of councils.
The State Election Commission (SEC) has completed its preparedness to complete polling exercise in the 1,968 booths spread over the 66 UlBs going for polls in 20 districts and the counting process in 66 centres.
According to State Election Commissioner Ajit Kumar Tripathy, polling would be held in all the 1,968 booths through EVMs and foolproof arrangements had been made for holding the elections in the booths in the Naxal-affected areas. He said that video recording would be held in all the booths while CCTVs would be installed in sensitive booths to record the proceedings to avoid any kind of malpractice. There are 365 sensitive booths of which 58 are highly sensitive, he said.
Besides, the SEC has kept close coordination with the Collectors and SPs for ensuring law and order and an incident free poll exercise.
Each polling party comprises five officials who would conduct the polling exercise while 26 senior officials have been deployed as observers to monitor the poll process. As many as 26 engineers have been engaged to take care of the EVMs at the time of any snags during the polling process, Tripathy said.
The SEC had issued notification on August 12 for holding elections to 90 UlBs, including the Brahmapur Municipal Corporation. However, the elections in 25 UlBs in nine western Odisha districts were postponed following an agitation by the lawyers’ bodies demanding setting up of High Court Bench in the region which was supported by all the political parties.
While Chief Minister and BJD chief Naveen Patnaik had led the campaign from the front for the ruling BJD taking a whirlwind tour addressing around 60 meetings, PCC chief Jayadev Jena, AICC in-charge of Odisha Hari Prasad ,Union Minister Srikant Jena and youth leader lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra were busy addressing public meetings.
The BJP, too, had engaged all its strategies to rev up its party apparatus to win the urbanites. State BJP president KV Singh Deo was on the forefront of the campaign for the party while other leaders like Manmohan Samal, Samir Dey and Sajjan Sharma fanned out across the State to campaign in favour of the party candidates.
Besides, the ruling BJD had employed the services of Ollywood stars Sidhant Mohapatra, who happens to be the lok Sabha Member from Brahmapur, Anubhav Mohanty and comedy king Papu Pompom to attract the young mass in favour of the party.
The Congress was also not behind. The party had engaged veteran Ollywood star Bijoy Mohanty and Kuna Tripathy of teleserial ‘News-fuse’ and a few other lady artists to campaign for the party. However, high pitched campaign was witnessed on the last day with Chief Minister Patnaik, AICC general secretary Prasad and BJP State chief Singh Deo trying to make last ditch effort to woo the voters.
Though the leaders of all the three major political parties have asserted to capture a majority of the UlBs to form councils, a large number of Independents in the fray, most of whom are dissidents, would play a major role in the polls, said sources.