Orissa: BJD leads in 14 of 21 LS seats

Ruling BJD, which had established leads in at least 65 of the 147 assembly seats in Orissa, has also surged ahead in 14 of the 21 Lok Sabha constituencies as the counting of votes progresses.      

The Congress candidates were leading in six parliamentary seats while its senior leader and former Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang was trailing in his traditional Koraput (ST) seat.      

In another jolt to Congress, Union minister of state Chandra Sekhar Sahu was trailing in the Aska parliamentary constituency behind cine-star Siddhanta Mohapatra of BJD.      

The leading Congress candidates included former Union ministers Srikant Jena (Balasore), Bhakta Charan Das (Kalahandi) and former Chief Minister Hemanand Biswal from Sundargarh (ST) seat.      

Senior Congress leader and former state minister Amarnath Pradhan was leading over his BJD rival Rohit Pujari in Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat, while in Nabarangpur(ST), Pradip Kumar Majhi (Cong) was leading over sitting BJP MP Parsuram Majhi.      

The lone CPI candidate Bibhu Prasad Tarai was leading in Jagatsinghpur (SC) Lok Sabha constituency over his Congress rival Rabindra Kumar Sethi. The CPI, CPI(M) and NCP had entered into a seat-sharing arrangement with the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD.      

Prominent BJD leaders who were leading included sitting Lok Sabha members Prasanna Patsani (Bhubaneswar), Tathagat Satpathy (Dhenkanal) and Bhartruhari Mahtab (Cuttack).      

Former Union minister and sitting BJD MP Arjun Sethi was leading in his home turf Bhadrak(SC).      

BJD, which had an alliance with BJP, had won 11 of the Lok Sabha seats in the 2004 parliamentary polls. The party snapped its alliance with the saffron party just ahead of the Lok Sabha and assembly elections.