Cyclone Phailin that had hit undivided Ganjam district in October last became the main poll plank in this region, which voted on Thursday.
The area is considered to be the BJD’s bastion, and chief minister Naveen Patnaik is contesting from the Hinjili Assembly segment.
The three principal contenders of power — the BJD, the Congress and the BJP — tried their best to highlight the cyclone albeit in their own ways to seek votes. The BJD was in an agressive mode with Naveen attacking the Congress-led central government for its apathy towards the calamity’s victims. The ruling party bandied the recognition that the state government had received from various quarters, including the United Nations, for its swift efforts in evacuating over nine lakh people in a short span of time. Incidentally, disaster management minister S.N. Patro, a key figure of the Naveen's think tank, is seeking re-election from one of the Assembly segments in the district.
The party did not miss the opportunity to point out that nearly 10,000 people had lost lives in the Super Cyclone in 1999 when the state was being ruled by the Congress.
“It was due to our collective (people and government) efforts,” Naveen kept telling people during his whirlwind tour of the district. He taunted his opponents, saying: “Where were they (Congress and BJP leaders) during the crisis? They visited flood-hit Uttarakhand and Assam promptly, but they never bothered to come to Odisha.”
The BJD’s propaganda machine, too, worked over time — in print as well as electronic media — to remind the people of the miseries that they had encountered during Phailin and the state government’s efforts. The campaign seemed to have boomeranged against its party candidate cine star Siddhant Mohapatra, who is seeking a second term from the Berhampur Lok Sabha seat. Siddhant had not visited the constituency immediately after Phailin. His explanation that he had been busy in the areas where people suffered during the cyclone seemed to have not been accepted by the electorate.
Former Union minister and Congress Lok Sabha candidate Chandra Sekhar Sahu, who had lost the seat to Siddhant in 2009, said during his campaign that the Centre had given Rs 1,000 crore to the state immediately after the disaster, but, the Naveen government had been misleading the electorate. Congress candidate Bikram Panda for the Berhampur Assembly seat said: “Most of the affected families are suffering and the state government has done nothing for them.”
The CPM’s Lok Sabha candidate Ali Kishore Patnaik said: “The BJD wants to secure votes in the name of Phailin. Distribution of financial assistance to the Phailn victims has been selective and only given to BJD supporters.”
A Phailin victim, Urmilla Behera, who lost her house in the disaster, still finds it difficult to fend for her family members. “The government has provided us Rs 3,200 for reconstruction of our damaged house — which is insufficient. Poverty has forced me to send two of my sons to work in hotels,” said Urmila.
From the undivided Ganjam district, the BJD won both the Lok Sabha seats and 12 Assembly seats in 2009. The Congress had won two Assembly segments and the CPI, BJD’s poll partner, one. This time, outgoing CPI MLA Adikanda Sethi is contesting from Chhatrapur on a BJD ticket.
Naveen replaced outgoing Aska Lok Sabha MP Nityananda Pradhan with former MLA Ladukishore Swain. Swain locked horns with Sriloknath Rath, son of Congress veteran and former Union minister Rama Chandra Rath.
The BJD has fielded a number of scions from the erstwhile royal family. Apart from re-nominating V. Sugnana Kumari Deo, nine-time legislator belonging to the erstwhile Khallikote royal family and Usha Devi of Chikiti, Naveen also picked up Nandini Devi, a scion of Dharakote royal family for the Sankhemundi Assembly segment. Nandini has been pitted against outgoing Congress MLA Ramesh Chandra Jena.
The Congress is banked upon the anti-incumbency factor and the BJP’s focus during the campaign was on Modi wave.
