Lok Sabha Elections: It’s IAS Vs IPS Battle Royale In Bhubaneswar

Former bureaucrat Aaparajita Sarangi and former top cop Arup Patnaik will lock horns in the prestigious Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha constituency in what is being billed as the ‘IAS vs. IPS Battle Royale’. The former Mumbai Police Commissioner was among the nine named as BJD candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections by party supremo Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday evening.

Patnaik’s nomination from the seat, held by ‘Baba’ Prasanna Patsani in the last five Lok Sabhas, was, however, a mere formality. That he figured prominently in Naveen Patnaik’s scheme of things had become clear when he was appointed the head of Biju Yuva Vahini, a ‘volunteer’ force of youth raised by the state government. His name has been doing the rounds as the candidate for Bhubaneswar for several months now. He has even started campaigning in the constituency in the company of local BJD leaders after getting the go-ahead from Naveen. Aparijita has got a head start, having launched her door-to-door campaign some three months ago almost immediately after joining the BJP. But she has a lot of ground to cover considering the BJD won the seat with a hefty margin of 1.9 lakh votes in the 2014 elections. The Congress has left the seat for senior CPI (M) leader Janardan Pati as part of its electoral pact with the two Left parties and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). Bhubaneswar thus has all the makings of a truly triangular contest.  

The other notable name in the list of BJD candidates released on Wednesday is Ollywood superstar Anubhav Mohanty, who will take on BJP national vice president Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda in Kendrapara. Mohanty, currently a Rajya Sabha member, was fielded in the key constituency after several local BJD leaders reportedly backed out. The Congress is yet to name its candidate here. But observers feel no matter who is fielded by the party, the contest is going to be mainly between the BJD and BJP in this anti-Congress bastion.

The ruling party has fielded as many as seven new faces among the nine named as candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, including Mohanty who has been fielded in Kendrapara where Jay Panda was the BJD candidate last time. Out go Prasanna Patsani from Bhubaneswar, veteran Arjun Sethi in Bhadrak, Dr Kulamani Samal in Jagatsinghpur,  Ramachandra Hansda in Mayurbhanj, Nagendra Pradhan in Sambalpur and Rita Tarai in Jajpur. In their places come Arup Patnaik, Manjula Mandal, Dr. Rajashree Mallick, Dr. Debashish Marandi, Nalini Kanta Pradhan and Sasmita Sethi respectively. Only Pinaki Mishra in Puri and Rabindra Jena in Balasore have managed to retain their seats. This is a continuation of the pattern seen in the first list of nine Lok Sabha candidates announced by Naveen on March 18, which had no less than eight new faces with only Kalikesh Narayan Singhdeo retained from Bolangir.

As he had done in the first round, the BJD supremo has named three women in the list of nine Lok Sabha candidates released yesterday. Naveen, it may be noted, had announced on March 10 that the BJD would reserve 33% of Lok Sabha seats for women in what was seen as an attempt refurbish his pro-women credentials. Strangely though, the reservation does not extend to the Assembly elections where the number of women candidates is pretty low.   

Among the seven new faces named today, Dr. Debashish Marandi contested the last parliamentary election as a JMM candidate in Mayurbhanj while Dr. Rajashree Mallick was the MLA from Tirtol, part of the Jagatsinghpur Lo Sabha seat from where she has been fielded. The choice of Nalini Kanta Pradhan, who was the Works secretary on extension and resigned before his extended tenure ended to plunge into politics, has raised a lot of eyebrows in political circles since this controversial former officer is mired in allegations of corruption. His nomination from Sambalpur is bound to give a fresh lease of life to those allegations during the campaign. Rabindra Jena has also been interrogated by the CBI in the mega chit fund scam. But his nomination suggests that considerations of realpolitik have outweighed the question of a clean image.

More or less the same pattern was seen in the list of 36 Assembly candidates released on Wednesday. While Mayurbhanj MP Ramachandra Hansda, who spent years in jail in the chit fund scam, has missed out on a ticket altogether, two other leaders – Pravat Tripathy and Pravat Biswal – who also did time in jail have been replaced with their sons – Debi Prasanna and Souvik – in Banki and Cuttack-Choudwar respectively.

There are others who have been summoned or interrogated by the CBI in the chit fund case but have still been retained in their erstwhile seats. Prominent among them are Arun Sahu in Nayagarh, Sanjay Dasburma in Brahmagiri and Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak in Mahakalpara, all of whom wield a lot of influence in the party organisation. The party supremo has kept out only those among the tainted leaders who have spent time in jail.

While the first list of candidates for both Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections had seen large scale changes, drastic changes have been limited only to the Lok Sabha candidates in the list released on Wednesday. This suggests that Naveen Patnaik, having seen the virtual exodus and rebellion that the wholesale changes in the first round had triggered, has chickened out of carrying on with the same policy and played it safe in the next lot.