By D.N. Singh
In the din of electoral filibustering for the first phase of the polls in Odisha, what has been lost sight of is the most focused Lok Sabha seat in coastal Odisha, Kendrapada. The constituency has somehow grown to be a kind of potboiler with a myriad of players trying to exploit the pitch in their favour.
However, the major attraction of Kendrapada is how political nuances can be so metamorphic into a kind personal battle between two – Naveen Patnaik and his bête noire Baijayant Panda who now fights to snatch a victory from the jaws of Naveen Patnaik for political survival. Patnaik on the other hand must be making all out efforts to shatter Panda’s dreams through all the political resources at his command.
The task is not easy for either of the two. Patnaik faces an uphill task to neutralise the fury of enemies ganged up there, and on the other, in his do or die battle to reinvent his moorings in politics Panda has to weather the onslaught that Patnaik will try to create through his persona.
Fielding a popular film star, Anubhav Mohanty, as his trump card to retain the seat that usually is a BJD bastion for two decades, now, somehow appears to be a calculated risk given the fact that Mohanty does not command a sound political firepower, who is still in a learning stage as regards politics.
However, what might prove to be a succour for him is the face of Patnaik as the mascot and the other catalyst is the assembly segments in Kendrapada where the Biju Janata Dal has his battery of old players to replenish the short-falls through the grassroots cadres.
For Panda, the pitch is no less sticky. He has been winning this Lok Sbha seat riding piggyback on Patnaik and in the last election had been able to poll more than six lakh votes jacking up BJD’s score to about 52 per cent.
Poll watchers wonder if Panda can sway that number of BJD voters in his favour. Not an easy task. Going by the psyche of normal voter of that region who owe allegiance to late Biju Patnaik for long. Whether they will be ready to shift their loyalty towards some turn-coat is no less difficult a question.
His task is made more daunting by the past yardsticks that the BJP had finished a third in Kendrapada and to add to that one lakh odd votes that had gone in favour of the BJP, will Panda be able to add to that one lakh and how much, the answer is not an easy one.
With its old organisational footing in Kendrapada, BJD obviously has an advantage plus the mass appeal that Anubhav enjoys as a popular actor can’t be ruled out altogether to remain a factor in his favour. Mohanty shall be going to make political capital in the name of Biju Patnaik and now his son Naveen Patnaik .
Which may work out to be a reason for the voters of a politically vibrant and conscious Kendrapada to weigh between Naveen Patnaik and Panda who had in recent days had described in his tweets that how late Biju Patnaik was ‘ dependent’ on his family and such take downs may not go well with the voters who held Biju Patnaik in different esteems.
Although Panda has, in a way, managed to get Bijoy Mohapatra to stand by him at occasions but Mohapatra is himself is in a dicey state after last three consecutive defeats from three different assembly segments, and has to first recapture the momentum for himself than holding a placard for Panda.
It will be an under-estimation to side-step the performance of the Congress candidate Dharani Dhar Nayak who claimed the second position by polling above 3,92,000 votes and is now contesting for the second time.
