With the counting for the panchayat polls in Odisha entering the third and final day on Monday, the ruling BJD won 542 of the 610 Zilla Parishad seats, the results of which have been declared so far. The opposition BJP and the Congress got only 31 and 30 seats respectively, and others, including independent candidates, bagged only seven, the state election commission said in its latest report. The counting for the remaining 241 Zilla Parishad seats is underway. Going by the trends, the party led by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is set to create a record in the rural elections by surpassing its previous best of 651 in 2012.
Altogether 2.2 lakh candidates were in the fray and the State Election Commission (SEC) had already declared 36,523 ward members, 126 Sarpanchs, 326 Samiti members, and one Zilla Parishad nominee as elected uncontested. The ruling BJD has wrested several Zilla Parishad seats from the BJP in Kalahandi, Mayurbhanj, Bolangir, Sambalpur and Sundergarh districts where the saffron party had performed exceedingly well in the previous rural polls and the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP had emerged as the state’s main opposition party when it bagged 297 Zilla Parishad seats in 2017. It secured just 36 in the 2012 rural polls. The Congress won only 60 such seats in the 2017 panchayat polls.
Union Minister Bisheswar Tudu, who had extensively campaigned for the BJP in Mayurbhanj district, blamed the state’s ruling for “influencing voters by using its government machinery”. “I am surprised over the panchayat election results. It is hard to believe that the polls were conducted in a free and fair manner,” Tudu said. BJP MP from Balasore Pratap Sarangi, however, described the election results as the reflection of money power. According to political analysts, the distribution of smart health cards under the Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana by the BJD government proved to be a game-changer in this year’s panchayat polls.
Meanwhile, the ruling party had on Sunday moved the state election commission and demanded recounting of votes in a Zilla Parishad seat in Bisoi block of Mayurbhanj district. JMM candidate Sital Kisku won the ZP zone – 033 by a margin of only 22 votes.
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