As on the previous three occasions, the Kandhamal Lok Sabha seat in Odisha will have a new MP in 2019.
Voters of this parliamentary constituency and seven Assembly segments under it will exercise their franchise in the second phase on April 18.
The Kandhamal LS constituency was carved out in 2008 following the delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies. Since its first election in 2009, this seat has always been bagged by the Biju Janata Dal, but the winning candidates have changed.
In 2009, Rudra Madhab Ray won the seat for the BJD. In 2014, BJD’s new candidate Hemendra Chandra Singh won it. But he passed away after a few months and his wife Pratyusha Rajeshwari Singh retained it for the party in a by-election held in the same year. But the party has not repeated her candidature this time.
Five candidates
Five candidates are in the fray, with the BJD, the BJP and the Congress all fielding new faces. The BJD has nominated educationist and Rajya Sabha MP Achyuta Samanta as its candidate. Mahamegha Bahan Aira Kharabela Swain is the BJP candidate. Mr. Swain as a BJP member had represented Balasore parliamentary constituency in the 13th and the 14th Lok Sabha but later formed his own regional party, Utkal Bharat. Ahead of the 2019 election, he has returned to the BJP.
While these two are from outside Kandhamal district, the Congress has picked Manoj Acharya, the president of its Baliguda town unit, as candidate. His father Simanchal Acharya is the working president of the Kandhamal district Congress.
The other candidates are Amir Nayak of the Bahujan Samaj Party and Tuna Mallik of the CPI-ML(Red Star).
Although Kandhamal may bring alive memories of past incidents of communal violence elsewhere, it is not a major poll issue in the four Assembly segments. Three other segments, however, have a sizeable number of minority voters as well as many Sangh Parivar activists. Kailash Dandapat, a local social activist, claims this time people of the region will vote on developmental issues.
Published - April 03, 2019 01:31 am IST
