BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra has lost to Pinaki Misra of the BJD in a closely-fought contest in the Lok Sabha election in Puri constituency. The result for Puri was disclosed overnight, with Misra managing to scrap through by a margin of just 11,714 votes.
Patra's entry to electoral politics was one of the most keenly watched events of the Odisha campaign, where the BJP strove hard to pose a challenge to the BJD of Naveen Patnaik, which has been ruling the state since 1999. Patra entered the limelight with his performance as an aggressive spokesperson for the BJP in the past five years. Patra, a surgeon by profession, had run a spirited campaign in Puri.
At 9.50am on Friday, of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in Odisha, the BJD is leading in six seats and has won six others, while the BJP is leading in four and has won four seats. The Congress, the main opposition party in Odisha till 2014, won just one seat.
Some exit polls had predicted the BJP would displace the BJD as the party with most Lok Sabha seats in Odisha. While that did not happen, the BJP boosted its tally from its 2014 performance of just one seat. The scale of Patra's victory itself is evidence of the BJP's rise: In 2009 and 2014, Misra had won from Puri by margins of over 2.2 lakh.
The BJP's vote share in Odisha has risen to 38.37 per cent, with the BJD marginally ahead at 42.77 per cent. The BJP nearly doubled its vote share from the figure of 21.5 per cent achieved in 2014, while the BJD's share fell marginally from the 44.8 per cent achieved that year.
In the assembly polls in Odisha, Patnaik's BJD has won or is leading in 112 seats of the 147-member legislature. While the BJD has achieved a near-repeat of its 2014 performance of 116 seats, the BJP's tally in 2019 has risen from 10 seats to 23 seats in the Odisha assembly.
