Congress candidate for the Rourkela Assembly seat Pravat Mohapatra, who performed poorly and couldn’t protect his security money, has blamed internal conflict of his party for his defeat.
“Internal conflict is the principal reason behind my defeat. Besides, lack of star campaigner and spending of huge amount of money by two other rival party candidates are other major reasons,” Mohapatra said.
He said he faced a gloomy situation as committees from booth to district levels were not functioning for the last five years.Besides, he said delay in announcement of his name as the party candidate for the seat created bad impact on voters.
“A chunk of Rourkela voters comprise Gujarati, Bihari, Punjabi and Marwari people. BJP’s Narendra Modi held public meeting to appease them and BJD’s Naveen Patnaik conducted a road show to garner votes for his party candidate.
On the other hand, DCC President and more than fifty other leaders directly changed the floor to BJD and many other frontline leaders either joined or worked for BJP,” he revealed.