Invincible Naveen steers one other BJD landslide, BJP falls by the wayside

By Express News Service

BHUBANESWAR: The conch continued to have an all-encompassing sway over Odisha because the BJD headed for a landslide victory with full decimation of the opposition BJP and Congress within the panchayat elections, counting for which was taken up within the first part on Saturday.

As per the newest developments obtained from the State Election Commission (SEC), the ruling celebration had established leads in 280 zilla parishad (ZP) zones of the full 315, with the Congress surprisingly occupying a distant second place main 16 seats and BJP managing solely 15 zones.

Independents and others had been forward in 4 seats. While the developments have come as an enormous jolt for the BJP, the BJD was main in all of the 30 districts until studies final got here in.

The BJP which had made huge good points within the 2017 rural polls and had emerged a severe challenger to the BJD has discovered the tables turned this time and observing an entire wipeout even in its strongholds.  It has failed to determine leads in a single zone of as many as 17 districts.

These are Bhadrak, Deogarh, Gajapati, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Jharsuguda, Kandhamal, Kendrapara, Koraput, Malkangiri, Mayurbhanj, Nabarangpur, Nayagarh, Nuapada, Puri, Rayagada and Sonepur districts.

The ZP polls have thrown many surprises together with the BJD resurgence in Mayurbhanj, Kalahandi and Jharsuguda districts. In the 2017 elections, BJP had received 48 zones out of the 56 ZP zones in Mayurbhanj district whereas 5 seats had gone to BJD. However, there’s a full turnaround this time with the BJP failing to steer in a single out of the 26 zones. While the BJD is main in 23 seats, others are forward in three zones within the district. 

Similarly in Kalahandi district, the BJP had received 33 zones out of 36 in 2017 elections with two and one going to Congress and BJD respectively. However, developments obtained up to now present that BJD is forward in 13 out of the 16 zones with solely three zones for the saffron celebration. In Jharsuguda, BJD had drawn nil in 2012 and 2017 ZP polls out of the full 9 seats. 

However, this time, developments present that the BJD has led in 5 seats there. The BJP additionally suffered main reverses in Nuapada, the house district of BJP strongman and Kalahandi MP Basant Panda, by not main in even a single zone. In Balangir, one other BJP stronghold, the celebration is main in solely two as in opposition to 12 by BJD. The counting of votes will proceed on February 27 and February 28. 

Congress’s efficiency is noteworthy though it has not been capable of set up any lead in 23 districts.It has spectacularly managed to keep up its conventional strongholds within the southern districts of Koraput and Rayagada.

The celebration is main in 4 and 5 ZP zones in Koraput and Rayagada whereas it was forward in a single ZP zone in Cuttack. The celebration has received the Malkangiri-Chitrakonda zone in Malkangiri district.