Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to make a handsome comeback in Odisha with a significant section of voters preferring to select candidates from different parties for assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
In many places, people chose MLA candidates from either Biju Janata Dal (BJD) or Congress, while for Lok Sabha they pushed the button on ‘Lotus’, the symbol for BJP. The recently concluded first phase of polls, comprising 70 assembly seats and 10 Lok Sabha constituency, witnessed around 12 to 15 per cent split voting, according to political analysts and observers.
“These extra votes will add to traditional votes of BJP and could push their numbers in some constituencies where earlier they did not have much presence,” said an observer.
In 2009, the saffron party had to bite the dust when Odisha went to polls for the assembly and 21 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP, which had won 7 Lok Sabha seats on the strength of its tie-up with BJD in 2004, had to draw a blank in 2009 parliamentary election following breach of its alliance with the Naveen Patnaik led regional outfit just before the polls.
It had to lose ground in many places and came down to third positions in term of vote share- compared to 39 per cent for BJD and 29 per cent for Congress- with only 17 per cent voters in the state casting votes in favour its candidates. As a result its strength in the 147 member assembly had also depleted from 32 to only six seats.
Since then, the party was nearly decimated in every bypolls, panchayat and urban body elections. Many psephologists and poll surveys had discounted BJP’s chances while preparing seat captures by parties in Odisha in their reports published as early as January 2014.
However, the frequent rallies of BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in the state, coupled with a series of poll advertisements, have changed the scenarios in past one month or so. Even the ruling BJD had to change its poll strategy amid a Modi wave as its one rupee a kilo rice scheme became hardly an issue to attract the votes.
Recently, the BJP accused that ruling BJD was trying to polarise the votes by roping in Christian preachers to attract the votes from the community, something which was unheard of during other polls. BJD had severed its ties with BJP ahead of 2009 polls, accusing the saffron party of fueling the 2008 deadly Kandhamal riots that took place between tribal-turned Christians and local natives.
While BJP has been claiming its win about 12 seats out of 21 Lok Sabha seats this time, opinion polls conducted recently by several news channels project 5-7 seats for the party in the state. The BJP said the large number of voter turnout will help it improve its tally as the higher votes indicate anti-incumbency against the ruling government.
The opinion poll conducted by NDTV-Hansa Research has predicted rise in the vote share from 17 per cent in 2009 to 31 per cent, the percentage of increase coinciding with the per cent of split voting witnessed in the polls in the state, while predicting a dip in the Congress vote share to the equal extent.
In the first phase, the polling turnout was 75 per cent while for the second phase the turnout was 70 per cent.
