Hindol Assembly polls will not be an easy walkover for BJD this time, thanks to the filing of nominations by former BJD Cabinet Minister Anjali Behera as an Independent candidate.
Anjali is a strong candidate in Hindol reserved constituency for SC. She is the daughter of former Minister, Trinath Naik and former MlA Pata Naik. People still remember the contributions of Anjali’s family, especially former Minister Trinath, to the development of Hindol constituency. Trinath was an acolyte of former Chief Minister Biju Patnaik and had been inducted in his Cabinet as Health Minister.
With Trinath in the scene, Hindol had been a non-Congress forte for long years. Even after Trinath’s death, her wife Pata was elected as MlA from the seat. However, the nonperformance of Pata favoured the Congress for a brief spell and in 1995 elections Congress’s Maheswar Naik won from the seat defeating the Janata Dal.
Anjali was fielded as the BJD nominee for Hindol in 2000. Anjali won back the Hindol seat by defeating Congress’s Maheswar in a margin of more the 27,000 votes. In 2004 and 2009 elections, Anjali too defeated Congress nominee Trinath Behera and Rebati Behera in big margins, respectively. However, the turning point of Anjali’s career was her attendance of the May 29, 2012 secret meeting at Pyarimohan Mohapatra’s house, which was allegedly meant to upstage Naveen Patnaik. She was dropped from Patnaik’s Cabinet soon.
Ever since, Anjali has failed to win the confidence of Patnaik. While other BJD leaders, who were under scanner for complicity with Pyarimohan, got ticket, curiously, Anjali was debarred from the chance. Aggrieved Anjali filed nomination papers as Independent candidate.
She earned the Patnaik’s ire when she was expelled from the BJD for defying the party’s instruction not to go for the nomination. Political observers are of the opinion that if Anjali manages to secure more than 15,000 votes, definitely it will prove fatal for BJD nominee Seema Rani Naik.
Hindol is heading for a multi cornered fight among Congress’s Namita Naik, BJP’s laxmidhar Naik, BJD’s Seema and Independent Anjali. It may be noted here that Seema was originally in Congress and crossed over to the BJD to secure a ticket.
Congress too faces a crisis here as its former nominee Trinath Behera has crossed over to the Ama Odisha Party. Namita of Congress is a new face here. BJP nominee laxmidhar also is facing rivalry within the party unit. Besides these top contestants, others who are in the fray for the Assembly seat include Bijaya Kumar Behera from Samata Kranti Dal, Biranchi Narayan Nayak from Aam Admi Party and Sabita Naik from Ambedkar Party.