Ali Assembly seat is set to witness a straight fight between BJD candidate and sitting BJD MlA Pratap Keshari Deb, a scion of Ali royal family and Congress’s Debendranath Sharma. Sharma is also Kendrapada district Congress committee president.
Notably, the Assembly seat for long has remained a fiefdom of the royal family members of Ali as the voters have wholeheartedly supported royal family members. Sitting MlA Deb had defeated Sharma in last polls by a vote margin of 5,877. While Deb had secured 72,012 votes, Sharma had managed to get 66,135 votes.Deb too had emerged victorious from the seat in 2000 and 2004. His mother Sushri Devi, the spouse of late Sarat Deb, is a former member of the Rajya Sabha and former MlA of Aul Assembly.
Sarat Deb was a close associate of Biju Patnaik and had been elected thrice from the Assembly segment. He had also been elected from Kendrapara lok Sabha seat in 1983 by-election.The grandmother of Pratap Keshari Deb, Ramrajkumari Devi, had also been elected from Pattamundai Assembly segment in the first Assembly election in 1952 after the independence.In 1957, Ali constituency was formed and since 1957, the scions of the royal family are in the fray and have been on a winning streak.
Except in 4th, 9th and 11th Assembly elections, the royal family kept the seat with it.But this time, the Congress is all set to queer the pitch and has made all preparations to wrest the seat from Deb’s clutch.lack of development in the Assembly segment and corruption in several Government welfare schemes have been key poll issues for the Congress.
The coming elections would not be a cakewalk for the BJD as the Government has failed to construct embankments to control flood in the area.Each year the riverside villagers of Ali and Rajakanika are facing worst kind of floods in the rainy season but the Government has failed to construct flood protection embankments in these areas though the
BJD had promised in the last elections to construct the embankments, claimed the Congress supporters.On the other hand, Deb is fully confident about his victory. He feels that the Naveen magic will do wonder in the locality as elsewhere.“The BJD candidates would once again retain seats across the State including Ali as the voters have full faith in the leadership of Naveen Patnaik. The developmental measures undertaken by Patnaik have touched all sections of the society and hence, the BJD victory is a foregone conclusion,” stated Deb.
During the 2009 elections, Deb had managed to get victory as former Congress MlA Dolagobinda Nayak had remained silent by not supporting the Congress candidate.But this time if Nayak is going to support Sharma then Deb may find it difficult to win the polls, said sources.