Even as cross voting in some non-Congress states like Karnataka brought to fore the factionalism in the ruling dispension, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has been saved this embarrassment as its MLAs in the state, from a preliminary assessment, have been found to have voted mostly on party line.
BJD and BJP supported presidential candidate PA Sangma received 115 MLAs votes in Odisha while UPA candidate and president elect Pranab Mukherjee got only 26 votes.
In the 147-member assembly, BJD has 108 members and an independent supporting it, while Congress has 27 MLAs and support of three independent MLAs. Similarly, BJP, which was also supporting Sangma, has six MLAs with another MLA being an associate member. One Congress MLA could not vote in the election due to ill health.
It is reported that three votes, two votes in favour of Sangma and one in favour of Pranab have been rejected due to errors in casting the ballot.
Meanwhile, the division of votes in the election shows that while BJD MLAs have more or less voted on party lines, two from the Congress camp (including the independents supporting it) have cross-voted in support of Sangma.
The fact that Sangma has received the expected number of votes from BJD and BJP MLAs in the state has come as a boost to Patnaik’s hold in the party.
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This is significant in the backdrop of recent turmoil in the ruling BJD and the opposition candidate PA Sangma being projected as the BJD candidate by party supremo, Naveen Patnaik.
Patnaik had proposed the name of Sangma as the presidential candidate to get political mileage out of his tribal status (who constitute about one fourth of the state’s population) much before Sangma could garner the support of other non-Congress outfits including BJP to emerge as the combined opposition candidate. But given some recent developments in BJD, which saw an aborted coup being mounted against chief minister Naveen Patnaik by a section of party men led by his erstwhile advisor and Rajya Sabha MP, Pyari Mohan Mohapatra, there were speculations of cross-voting in the run-up to the presidential election.
Meanwhile, keeping with traditions of democracy, chief minister Patnaik congratulated Pranab on his thumping win in the election.