Kandhamal PC by-election went unnoticed by rest of India eclipsed under the penumbra of General Elections for the Assemblies in Maharashtra and Haryana. But it had lot of political significance for Odisha and three contesting parties. It has exposed the invincibility of BJD and poised a threat to the working of democracy. It appears that as long as the corrupt regime of Naveen Patnaik lasts, it would be next to impossibility to dethrone his party out of power. That apart, the Congress Party in Odisha appears to be totally impoverished and the BJP appears to be no viable alternative to BJD, so far as the game of numbers is concerned. BJP in Odisha, as it appears, requires immediate surgery, as it happened in Haryana and UP. The people responded there to overthrow corrupt regimes after the BJP Central leadership became determined to overhaul the respective state leadership. BJP in Odisha has to do a lot of heart searching to analyse where it went wrong for such a miserable defeat. The whole Party was sincerely engaged to get the newly inducted Ex-MP from BJD camp. The irony was that he could garner only little more than 25,000 votes from his Daspalla Assembly segment and trailed by more than 52,000 votes behind his BJD counterpart.It is still to be analysed whether he was a wrong choice or the entire strategy was wrong. The BJP got second position because the Congress could not have done worse. It is unfortunate that some in the BJP are celebrating it as an achievement. This euphoria does not augur well for the Party.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 02:20:31 +0000