With polling for the first phase of the general elections in the State for 10 lok Sabha and 70 Assembly seats to be held on Thursday, political parties and their candidates are keeping their fingers crossed about what is in store for them.
The leaders of the three major parties, the BJD, the Congress and the BJP, may have been boasting in public about doing far better this time than ever before, but privately they tell you they are not all sure how the voters are going to behave.
The BJD’s election managers are a worried a lot despite an impression that the ruling party is ahead of others this time too. A senior BJD leader said things are not encouraging at the ground level. Secondly, he felt the administrative machinery including the police has not been quite ‘helpful’ for the party as they were in 2009.
Even in Ganjam, which is believed to be a stronghold of the BJD, there are fissures at a number of places where the electoral arithmetic could go against the party due to the factors of anti-incumbency, rebels and unenthusiastic workers, the leader said.
The BJD leader also conceded that the whirlwind campaigning by the party’s sole vote-catcher Naveen Patnaik has not had the same impact as in 2009. All other senior party leaders are busy defending their own forts while film stars are of little consequences to the voters in this election.
“We have spent a lot of money on publicity and we hope that it will have some impact on voters, but that cannot be the gamechanger,” he said.The Congress hopes to do well in southern and western Odisha due to some factors including the rise in the BJP vote share owing to the Modi factor which they believe will affect the BJD much more than the Congress.
While the BJP as a whole is in an upbeat mood, its leaders are not too sure whether the so-called Modi wave is going to work for their candidates. They also concede that the Congress may benefit by default at many places where there is a triangular fight. However, they claim that the party will do exceedingly well in the lok Sabha elections, thanks to the Modi factor. In 2009, the party had failed to open its lS account in the State.