NEW DELHI: In a significant political shift, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to form the next government in Odisha, leading with 80 seats as the vote counts progress. The Biju Janata Dal (BJD), led by incumbent Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, is trailing with 50 seats, while the Indian National Congress (INC) leads in 15 seats. Other parties, including CPI-M and the INDI Alliance, hold leads in one and two seats, respectively.
Early trends indicated a possible BJD win in Jharsuguda, but later updates suggest the BJP is likely to secure a victory in this crucial constituency. The seat, previously held by BJD’s Naba Kishore Das, saw his daughter Dipali Das contest against the BJP’s Tankadhar Tripathy. Das was tragically murdered in January 2023, and Dipali won the byelection last May with a substantial margin of 48,721 votes.
The BJP’s success has sparked massive celebrations at the party office in Bhubaneswar. With the saffron party leading in key constituencies such as Bargarh, Kalahandi, Balangir, Puri, Sambalpur, and Keonjhar, it seems set to govern Odisha for the next five years, relegating the BJD to the opposition.
In a comparative look at the 2019 elections, the BJD had won 12 of Odisha’s 21 Lok Sabha seats, while the BJP secured eight and the INC managed just one seat. This year’s results mark a dramatic reversal, with the BJP leading in 19 seats, the BJD in one, and the INC maintaining its hold on only one seat.
The 2019 general elections saw the BJD garner 43.3% of the votes, the BJP 38.9%, and the INC 14%. Voter turnout was 76.1%, with 2,37,90,972 votes cast across 21 parliamentary constituencies, including 13 general, three reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC), and five for Scheduled Tribes (ST).
This year’s simultaneous assembly and Lok Sabha elections, conducted in four phases from May 13 to June 1, indicate a significant shift in the political landscape of Odisha, with voters seemingly favoring the BJP over the BJD, which has dominated the state’s politics for years.