Bhubaneswar, Aug. 5: The BJP today lost to the BJD in the bypolls to two seats of the Deogarh Municipality.

The BJP's Nitesh Gang Dev is MLA of the Deogarh constituency, which is one of 10 seats it holds in the 147-member Assembly. The area is considered as a bastion for the party.

The results come as a dampener to the party's efforts to emerge as a serious challenger to the BJD. Last month, it lost the zila parishad seat in Nuapada, home of state unit chief Basant Panda. The Congress had emerged as the principal opposition there, relegating the BJP to third.

In ward No. 1, the BJD's Ahimsa Nayak defeated his nearest rival, the BJP's Roshan Behera, by 71 votes. Ahimsa got 523 votes, while Behera secured 452. In ward No. 9, the BJD's Kula Chandrama Hasti beat Rajkumar Munda of the BJP by 197 votes. Hasti got 582 votes, while Munda managed 385.

Voting in the two wards were held yesterday and the results declared today.

BJD spokesperson Samir Ranjan Dash said: "The election may have been confined to two wards, but the results expose their tall claims that the people of Odisha have accepted them and are distancing themselves from the BJD."

"It proves our statement that the BJP has no base in Odisha. The people have reposed their faith on chief minister Naveen Patnaik," the BJD spokesperson said.

He said the BJP's dream of securing power would "remain a daydream".

BJP vice-president Samir Mohanty said: "The ruling party took the elections seriously and spent a lot of money. The BJD has become aggressive after we targeted the chief minister for providing false affidavits on expenses to the Election Commission."

According to sources, several state BJP leaders are unhappy with the party's performances in west Odisha.

Despite the euphoria over the results of the last panchayat elections where the BJP made significant inroads into the BJD territory, the party has failed to keep up the momentum and lost steam.

In the panchayat elections, after the BJP won 297 zila parishad seats, it had started an intensive campaign against the BJD and claimed that it would dislodge the party from power. It had also staged its national executive meeting in the state last April.

BJP national president Amit Shah, during his visit to the state last month, had claimed that the BJP would get 120 out of the 147 Assembly seats in the state in the next elections in 2019.