By D.N. Singh
Odisha’s once communally sensitive district Kandhamal goes to the polls in the second phase on April 18. Time has almost started ticking away as the three candidates for this Lok sabha seat can be seen slugging day long to woo the voters.
What is more interesting that, the candidate from the Biju Janata Dal , Achyut Samant , whose chances, according to some pollsters , of a victory seems bright, is an outsider yet his years long association with the tribal community through his institution KISS has been able to make his identity here more easy. His is a name that has assimilated with the tribal sentiments and psyche as tribal students in thousands have been roped into the KISS for free education towards a better tomorrow.
With that being an advantage for Samant, the latter seems to have gone a few extra miles in Kandhamal in comparison to other two rivals from the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
What appear making things bit more easy for Samant is that his rival from the BJP, Kharavela Swain has been dropped here like extra-terrestrial entity. Swain, who had recently joined the BJP, just hours after that was named as the candidate for Kandhamal, an area that is not only thickly populated by tribal but, for Swain, it came as a paradigm shift from Balasore in northern fringe of the state, all the way to the hilly Kandhamal . Where people in general, perhaps, hardly know him and that leaves Swain to fend for himself riding on the crest of Modi wave alone.
It had been a contrasting sight for the people who witnessed Swain with his political firepower as a speaker and Samant, a short, soft-spoken and suave persona who tends to identify himself more as a social worker than a political leader.
Samant during his entire campaign has hardly trod into an area of rusticity and the use of any political hyperboles in his speeches. He spoke as he speaks but only it was amplified in volume.
The other advantage that Samant enjoys is that, the Congress candidate here is Manoj Acharya who has his influence in two or three assembly segments and that may not suffice to enable him to breach into the domain of trust falling within Samant’s reach. The major factor is the all- pervasive outreach of Samant among the tribal mass that plays a decisive role in Kandhamal.
Kandhamal that had once hit the international headlines post the 2008 communal riot, may not, in all likelihood, brook the resurge of any saffron domination which may not dovetail with the normal psyche.
That is a point where the BJP may witness its earlier vote bank decelerate and work as a booster for Achyut Samant to get it easy.
