As the general elections draw near, speculations are rife whether Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan would contest from an Assembly or a Lok Sabha constituency or would not fight elections in the State at all.
Of late, what Pradhan has indicated is that he may contest from the Pallahara Assembly seat in Angul district, from where he had been elected in the 2000 polls when his BJP was in coalition with the BJD. He also won the Deogarh Lok Sabha seat in 2004 when the BJD-BJP alliance was intact. But he lost the Assembly fight from Pallahara to the BJD’s Rabi Narayan Pani in 2009 when the BJD had snapped its ties with the BJP. He refrained from contesting polls in 2014.
However, Pradhan seems to be still undecided about his constituency as he officially says that he can contest from any of the State’s 147 Assembly constituencies.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, sitting Pallahara BJD MLA Maheswar Sahu challenged Pradhan to face him in the 2019 elections from this constituency. Sahu said Pradhan has to explain to the people what contributions he and his family have for the development of the area. (Notably, Dharmendra’s father Dr Debendra Pradhan was once the Pallahara MLA and the Deogarh MP.)
Sahu further stated that he does not think Dharmendra would at all contest the coming elections either to the Assembly or the Parliament.
As political observers feel, Dharmendra, who is perceived as the BJP’s face in Odisha as per the party high command’s scheme of things, would shy away from electoral fight in the State only to confirm his opponents’ taunt that he has lost roots in his State’s grassroots politics. He is presently a Rajya Sabha member from Madhya Pradesh while he was previously elected to the Upper House of Parliament from Bihar.