Fissures appear in the pre-poll alliance between the Aama Odisha Party (AOP) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in Odisha as candidates from both the parties are pitted against each other in the prestigious Cuttack Parliamentary seat.
After the expiry of withdrawal deadline on Saturday, it was seen that all the ten candidates, whose nomination papers were found valid during scrutiny, are in fray, including AOP’s Kharavel Swain and TMC’s Jibesh Kishore (Jubuli) Sundaray.
It may be mentioned here that the AOP and TMC reached a pact to make seat adjustment and accordingly, six lok Sabha seats, including Balasore and 48 Assembly seats were allotted to TMC.On the basis of this seat adjustment, senior AOP leader and former MP Kharavel Swain, who had filed his nomination papers for Balasore lS seat, had to fall back at the last moment and filed his papers for Cuttack seat.
When contacted earlier, Swain had said that the TMC candidate in Cuttack constituency would be asked to withdraw. However, this did not happen on Saturday and the TMC candidate, who had recently quit from the Aam Admi Party (AAP), is determined to fight in Cuttack under the twin grass flower symbol.
“I don’t know about what the AOP leaders are saying on ‘friendly fight’ between both the parties. I am serious about my candidature in Cuttack, where I was born and brought up,” said Sundaray, the model and actor-turned-politician.
On the other hand, Swain, who has launched his campaign trail here, is completely confused over the tie up and seat adjustments between the AOP and the TMC. The former BJP leader Swain, who was till last month heading the Utkal Bharat party in the State, merged with AOP after his attempt to form an alliance with BJP failed.
“This is what the game of politics in the country is about and we have to reconcile with it,” Swain hanged out, concluding.