Formed just on the eve of 2014 elections, the Aama Odisha Party (AOP) by former Congress MP and editor-cum-politician Soumya Ranjan Patnaik is out to further erode the already depleting electoral prospects of the Congress.
“In this election we are more into establishing a strong base in the constituencies at grassroot level and get into the pocket boroughs of all the major political parties, including the Congress,” said AOP president Patnaik, who is contesting from the Khandapada Assembly segment.
Focussing its attention in coastal districts of the State, more particularly in the prestigious Cuttack Parliamentary constituency, the AOP is also out to upset the applecart of the ruling BJD in the State too.While clinching an alliance with regional outfit Utkal Bharat (UB) and reaching an electoral understanding with Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the last minute, Patnaik convinced UB president and former BJP MP Kharavel Swain to leave his Baleswar home turf to the TMC and concentrate in Cuttack.
Besides fielding Swain for the Cuttack lS seat, the AOP has put up candidates in all the seven Assembly segments under it, including Khandapada, which Patnaik had been nurturing for the last few years. Under the administrative control of Nayagarh district, the Assembly segment comes under Cuttack lS seat for which the segment gets a raw deal from the MPlAD fund.
As a Congress candidate, Patnaik had lost from here in 2009 to BJD nominee and Khandapada scion Sidhartha Sekhar Singh by a margin of 12,000 votes. But for Singh’s dismal performance in last term, BJD has fielded a new comer Anubhav Patnaik, who is finding it difficult to keep the rebellious BJD factions together.
This has made AOP’s Patnaik a clear favourite among Khandapada voters and people here this time are willing to rally behind the editor-turned-politician hoping that the highly neglected constituency, close to the State capital would be properly represented in the State Assembly by him.
With only four days now left for the April 17 polling, the AOP chief is way ahead of his contenders, more particularly giving the BJD nominee a run for his money.”The innocent people of Khandapada have always been cheated by its representatives and the constituency has been constantly neglected by the State government, more particularly during the last 14 years of Naveen Patnaik’s regime,” the AOP chief said.