Odisha is going to elections to 106 Municipalities and NACs and three Municipal Corporations on March 24 and there is high-pitch poll campaigning by different political parties. This time, the Mayors and the Chairpersons shall be directly elected. The direct election of Mayor/ Chairperson is the right step by the State Government to make them more accountable to the people.
The last urban local body (ULB) elections were conducted in the State in 2013-14 and 2014-15 in different phases due to lots of hurdles like court cases, western Odisha lawyers’ agitations. The court cases and the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the current elections.
The performance of the political parties in the just-conducted panchayat elections is influencing the urban voters. The ruling BJD had won the Zilla Parishad Chairperson seats in all the 30 districts and had a strike rate of more than 90% in Zilla Parishad Member election in the State. Such landslide victory of the BJD in the rural poll has provided a pro-BJD psychological environment among the voters in the forthcoming urban election.
Political analysts assume the same strike rate for the BJD in the urban poll again as there has been no significant improvement in the status of the opposition; neither is there any instance of noticeable governance failure of the ruling party after the panchayat poll.
Last time the BJD had bagged 70, the Congress 15, the BJP 3 and the Independents 6 ULB Chairperson seats out of 94 ULBs. This means 25% seats were captured by the Opposition. What is the situation of the Opposition now?
The Congress has become further weaker in the last Panchayat election , losing further 2.5% vote- share from its last Assembly election score. In the urban body polls, the party has not been able to put up candidates everywhere. In such situation, PCC president Niranjan Patnaik has written an article in a vernacular daily, lamenting the increasing use of money power in the recent elections in the State. The political analysts view that by writing such article at the election time, the Congress State chief is discouraging party’s financial support to the Congress candidates who are in the fray. Secondly, the people are not taking the reformist comments of the PCC head seriously as there was no difference in the electoral situation in the State when he took charge in 2018 by lobbying through the MLAs. Is he giving up before the ULB election?
Another important question is: Will the Odisha BJP be able to give a tough fight in the ULB election as the principal Opposition party in the State? It was seen that the urban voters had preferred the BJP in 2019 poll. Will it be the same this time? However, the State unit of the BJP is seen fighting the ULB- poll with lesser preparation like it did during the last Panchayat poll.
The prestigious Mayor election in Brahmapur, Bhubaneswar and Cuttack Municipal Corporations shall indicate the mood of the voters of the politically advanced coastal areas. The Brahmapur Municipal Corporation election seems to be a cakewalk for the BJD as Ganjam district is almost opposition free. Besides, it is the Chief Minister’s home district. The dropping of Gopalpur MLA, Pradip Panigrahi, from the BJD, had no effect on the party’s political base as is seen in the last Panchayat election and therefore shall not affect the forthcoming ULB poll.
In Cuttack and Bhubaneswar Municipal corporations, the BJD is fighting the poll with better preparedness as the Barabati-Cuttack- Assembly seat had gone to Congress and the Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha seat had gone to the BJP in the last election. The defeat of the Congress in the Cuttack ULB poll shall make inroads of the BJD to Barabati-Cuttack Assembly Constituency to win it in 2024 Assembly poll. On the other hand, if the Congress wins the Mayor seat, it will consolidate the position of the Cuttack Congress MLA and open opportunity for him to become the next State- president of the party.
The BJD has put up its Rajya Sabha MP and former communist local leader Subash Singh as Cuttack Mayor candidate and is expecting to have a safe win. On the other hand, the BJP has given its Mayor ticket to cine-actor and its cadre Sritam Das while the Congress has given the Mayor ticket to Giribala Behera, its senior woman leader. A triangular fight is on in Cuttack though the BJD is in an advantageous position.
To counter the BJP in Bhubaneswar ULB, the BJD had put its most vocal, clean and strong woman leader, Sulochana Dash, as its Mayor candidate who was a journalist and is currently the Chairperson of the State Commission for Persons with Disabilities. She has undertaken many reformative steps for the people during her tenure in the Commission. In addition, by giving ticket to a woman from the socially weaker OBC community, BJD supremo Naveen Patnaik has shown his commitment to the social-justice ideology on which the opposition is silent in the ULB poll though they were raising voice for the OBCs during last Panchyat election.
The BJP has put up a literary person as its Mayor candidate who is not from the party cader. The Congress has given ticket to a member of the Congress family but the party’s organisation is too weak to win.
The fight is between the BJD and the BJP in Bhubaneswar, where the BJD is in an advantageous position due to the candidate factor and the split-voting behaviour of the voters where they choose BJD for State governance.
Dissidents are a major headache for the BJD and the BJP. In Bhubaneswar, there is a fear that the BJD may lose some corporator seats due to the dissidents, though it will have no effect on the Mayor’s voting.