The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) emerged an emphatic winner in the election to the Patkura Assembly Constituency in Kendrapada district on Wednesday with its candidate Sabitri Agarwalla defeating Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nominee Bijay Mohapatra by a margin of 17,920 votes.
While Agarwalla bagged 96,017 votes, 78,097 votes were polled in favour of Mohapatra. Congress candidate Jayanta Kumar Mohanty had a pitiable performance getting a mere 2,104 votes.
Mohapatra’s hope of becoming an MLA since as far back as in 2000 was dashed to the ground yet again.
While he had been deprived of a BJD ticket to contest from Patkura in the 2000 polls, he was defeated as BJP candidate from the Patkura and Mahakalpada constituencies in 2009 and 2014, respectively.
Celebrations were held at the BJD’s offices in Bhubaneswar and Kendrapada with party workers bursting crackers and distributing sweets. The BJP office in Bhubaneswar wore a deserted look.
The poll result was a big jolt to Mohapatra, who was elected to the Assembly four times from Patkura way back in 1980, 1985, 1990 and 1995.
With the Patkura outcome, the BJD’s strength in the Assembly rose to 113 as it had won 112 seats in the last Assembly elections.
Notably, the Patkura election was earlier scheduled on April 29 in the last phase of the Assembly polls in the State. However, the election was countermanded following the death of BJD candidate Bed Prakash Agarwalla on April 20 and rescheduled for May 19.
The BJD had then named Bed Prakash’s wife Sabitri as its nominee. Later, the Election Commission of India (ECI) postponed the polls for due to the Cyclone Fani on May 3 and finally set July 20 as the date of polling.