The Soro Assembly constituency is another important segment in Baleswar district. It comes under the Bhadrak Parliament seat. The constituency has been known as a forte of Congress. Despite adverse conditions, the party could retain the seat for the last 30 years.
This time although six candidates are in fray, it is assumed the fight would be triangular with the Congress, the ruling BJD and the BJP being the main contestants. Due to change of party by prominent leaders just before the electioneering process, the equation has got disturbed in Soro.
It has become a tough task to guess the outcome as all the parties are encountering one problem or the other of similar nature with the dissidents posing a threat to each party. The three parties have fielded new candidates under forced circumstances. In the last elections, while the seat was won by Congress’s Surendra Parmanik, the margin of victory was very thin. He had defeated Parsuram Dhada of BJP by 360 votes only.
Parmanik was, however, not given ticket by the Congress and instead a new face Mrutyunjay Jena was fielded by the party. Dissatisfied with the party’s decision, Parmanik joined the BJD. Dhada who fought the last general elections in BJP ticket joined the Congress just before the last UlB polls.
An aspirant as he was, he too quit the party and joined the BJD when denied a ticket. Now, the BJD has fielded Dhada for Soro much to the chagrin of Parmanik. On the other hand, one Rakesh Mallick, who had been working since long to strengthen the BJD organisation, had to cross over to the BJP and obtained a ticket from the BJP too.
Under the circumstances, while all the prominent candidates are new, they are facing dissidence from own parties. Besides, they have little chance to divert votes of their parent parties.
Congress veteran Kartik Mohapatra represented the seat several times. He had to leave the constituency as the same became a reserved one since 2009. While the Congress camp here received a jolt after the quitting of Parmanik, it could face more troubles as another disgruntled group within party has raised its head led by block chairman Bahanaga Sarat Raj.
Raj was aspiring to get ticket from the Congress for the Nilgiri Assembly constituency, but at the eleventh hour, the party had announced the name of Kartik Mohapatra for the seat, ignoring him.