Samikhsya Bureau
To divert attention for some downbeat Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in Odisha, the only consolation is the thumping victory of the party in India. And an easy one to hide behind.
After the May 23 results, two souls are left out to brood. But their defeats have never been the shockers because, they must have sensed beforehand that all is not well yet they had to take cover-fire through pep-talks for relevance.
Damodar Rout, who had joined the BJP recently, suffered a nasty blow after his recent defeat in Erasama assembly seat, where he was relegated down to the third position.
He was the man who after his exit from the BJD had knitted dream to bloom Lotus in the saline waters of that area and to see that the BJD evaporates from that coastal pocket once known to be a Biju citadel.
Torn between self-despair and emotion for his son, Sambit Routray, BJD candidate for Paradeep, Rout at last found himself in an island of seclusion from where neither he could plead for the BJP nor could he sermonise people of Erasama against Naveen Patnaik.
A scene in the neighboring district, Kendrapada, although was not a facsimile of Rout’s plight but it did spell a doom for Baijayant Panda of BJP to realise whether his political relevance in the Lok Sabha seat he represented twice in a row was his own or he was just a man of Naveen Patnaik.
By polling around one lakh plus votes this time against his 6 lakh plus votes polled as a BJD candidate in 2014, Panda no more requires a mirror. He must have realised that nothing is more dangerous than the danger of over estimation of self.
