Jagatsinghpur: Large parts of the Jagatsinghpur Lok Sabha constituency bore the brunt of 1999 super-cyclone, which claimed more than 10,000 lives and left lakhs of people homeless on the Odisha coast. Jagatsinghpur sustained a majority of these casualties and maximum damage in the gale and struggled for more than a decade to regain normalcy.
In the assembly elections held in 2000, people not only in Jagatsinghpur but in the better part of coastal Odisha, voted against the incumbent Congress government and brought a Biju Janata Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJD-BJP) coalition government led by Naveen Patnaik to power. Since then Jagatsinghpur has been a BJD bastion, this Lok Sabha seat was won only once by the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 2009 when the party, following the breakdown of the BJD-BJP alliance in the state, had made seat adjustments with the Patnaik-led regional party.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
People have stuck to the BJD because of Patnaik government’s immense contribution to the recovery of Jagatsinghpur from the after-effects of the disastrous super-cyclone the like of which has not been seen by the country. “When the gale struck Congress was in power but it did nothing to help us. In fact, the entire administration was paralysed as if no one had any idea as to how to deal with the situation. Had Naveen Babu not come to power we would still be struggling for survival as there was hardly any source of livelihood left for us,” said Bibhuti Bhushan Swain of Kuliagaon under Balikuda block which had sustained extensive damage in the cyclone.
Interestingly CPI’s 2009 election candidate Bibhu Prasad Tarai who had won the Jagatsinghpur parliamentary seat with the BJD’s support is now in the BJP camp and is fighting this election on the saffron party’s ticket from the constituency for the second time in a row. He had lost the 2019 election to BJD’s Rajashree Mallick by a margin of around 2,71,655 votes. They are facing each other once again with Tarai pinning his hopes on the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi but the turncoat tag continues to haunt him. “He was with the CPI, then switched over to the Congress and finally landed up in the lap of the BJP. The party hopping must have taken a toll on his image,” said Jayanta Mohapatra in Jagatsinghpur bazaar where people discuss politics over cups of tea.
In 2014, Tarai lost against BJD’s Kulamani Samal by a huge margin of over two lakh votes when he had contested on a Congress ticket. He had registered his sole win from the constituency only in 2009 — it was, for all practical purposes, the victory of BJD president and chief minister Naveen Patnaik.
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Veteran local journalist Kanhu Nanda feels that the BJD should have little difficulty winning the seat once again as people are happy with the performance of the Patnaik government. “You may have heard about an undercurrent in favour of the BJP because of the Modi factor. But trust me it is not going to matter much. There is absolutely no reason why people should go against Patnaik’s party. His government has given them some excellent welfare schemes and its overall image is good. The people this time are also excited about the promise of free electricity made by the chief minister. I am sure they will go along with BJD,” averred Nanda.
Former Congress MLA from Balikuda-Erasama (which falls under Jagatsinghpur Lok Sabha), Dr. Lalatendu Mohapatra, however, asserts that there is a perceptible urge for change among the people. “Change, in fact, is the only issue in this election. There is a yearning among the masses to dislodge the present government in the state and install a new one,” said Mohapatra, who has spent his entire political career in the area.
Congress has fielded veteran Rabindra Kumar Sethy while the CPI has given the ticket to Ramesh Chandra Sethy in this seat. But both the candidates seem to be in the fray only to mark their presence. Given Congress’s limited influence in the constituency, its nominee is unlikely to have much impact on the outcome of the contest. It is no different with the CPI which once used to be a force in the constituency from where its veteran leader Loknath Choudhary was elected twice in 1989 and 1991. With neither the Congress party nor the CPI wielding much influence in Jagatsinghpur now, the seat will practically witness a direct contest between the BJD and the BJP.
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Notwithstanding the Modi factor, the BJD seems to have an edge because of its strong organisational base in the constituency of which all the seven assembly segments — Niali, Paradeep, Tirtol, Balikuda-Erasama, Jagatsinghpur, Kakatpur and Nimapara — are currently represented by the party. However, Nimapara could turn out to be a challenge for the party considering that the supporters of outgoing MLA Samir Ranjan Dash are unhappy with the denial of a BJD ticket to him this time. Dash, in fact, joined the BJP recently and pledged his support to the saffron party’s MLA candidate from Nimapara.
Political analysts like Shashi Kant Mishra, however, believe that such minor developments are unlikely to affect the outcome of the battle for the Lok Sabha constituency which covers a huge area and where a plethora of factors are at play. “Such developments can at best be described as pinpricks which the BJD leadership will ignore as it aims for the bigger prize. The real contest would be between the popularity of Prime Minister Modi and chief minister Patnaik. By the look of it Patnaik seems to have an edge,” opined Mishra.
