Despite strong presence of Sangh Parivar, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to win any seat in communally volatile Kandhamal district of Odisha in the recently concluded Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.
The Kandhamal Lok Sabha seat was won by the BJD candidate, Hemendra Chandra Singh who defeated his Congress rival and former State minister Harihar Karan by a margin of 2,40,441 votes. The BJP candidate Sukant Panigrahy received 1,08,774 votes to be in third place.
Kandhamal Lok Sabha seat contains Phulbani, G.Udaygiri and Baliguda assembly segments in Kandhamal district, Boudh and Kantamal in Boudh district, Bhanjanagar in Ganjam district and Daspalla in Nayagarh district.
Earlier, this Lok Sabha constituency was named Phulbani and in 2009, this seat had been won by the BJD candidate Rudramadhav Mishra. The BJP also fared badly in the Assembly polls in Kandhamal district. In 2009, the BJP had won in two out of three assembly seats of Kandhamal district, while the third Assembly seat was in the hands of the BJD. In the 2009 assembly elections the BJP had won from Baliguda and G.Udaygiri assembly seats while Phulbani seat had been won by the BJD. The BJP candidate Manoj Pradhan, had won from G.Udaygiri despite being in jail in relation to his involvement in communal riots in the district in 2008.
But the BJP failed to repeat its magic this time. The Baliguda seat was won by the BJD candidate Rajiv Patra . The sitting BJP MLA of Baliguda, Karendra Majhi, who had also won in 2004 was pushed to the third position. Similar was the fate of the BJP in G.Udaygiri. Despite the strong pro-BJD wave throughout the State, Congress candidate Jacob Pradhan won from this seat defeating his nearest Congress rival by a margin of 10,289 votes. Here also the BJP was pushed to third position. In the Phulbani assembly seat, the BJD had changed its candidate. In place of its sitting MLA Debendra Kanhar, it had fielded a new candidate Duguni Kanhar, who also won.
The decline of the BJP in Kandhamal district is seen as a result of lack of polarisation of votes in the district on religious sentiments. The elections of 2009 had been held few months after the communal riots in the district, which is said to be a reason behind the polarisation of votes in favour of the BJP in Kandhamal district in 2009.
