Belpahar: With elections to the Bargarh Parliamentary seat and the Jharsuguda and the Brajarajnagar Assembly seats scheduled for April 18 in the second phase, ticket aspirants of all the parties have been carrying out their political activities. However, no parties have come out with their lists of nominees with aspirants keeping their fingers crossed.
In the 2014 Assembly elections, Radharani Panda from the BJP, Anup Kumar Sai from the BJD, Kishore Patel from the Congress and Gajanan Sahu from the CPI had contested the polls.
Radharani had defeated Anup by a margin of over 7,000 votes.
The BJP mulls to field Radharani in the coming polls again. However, a section of the saffron party has opposed her leadership and pitched for a new face this time.
But the state BJP leadership needs to find a new face, who can challenge the rival leaders. Unless such a leader is found, the saffron party will not dare change Radharani, according to political observers.
On the other hand, Anup faces opposition from a section of his party workers, who have been pitching for an alternative while another group has been lobbying for Kishore Mohanty.
Over a 100 BJD workers have said that if Anup is fielded, there will be much resistance from the party workers. They added that Kishore Mohanty will be more acceptable to a major chunk of BJD supporters. One of these two leaders may be considered by the party for the seat.
It is widely believed that the Congress may mull fielding Kishore Patel again. But he is not keeping well. Political grapevines say Congress and CPI will have an alliance. Congress may spare four Assembly seats including Brajarajnagar to the CPI, it is said. Given this possibility, Ramesh Tripathy, who had left Congress and joined the CPI, may be given the party ticket.
In the past, the seat was under Congress for several years and political condition is said to be favourable to the party this time.
If the CPI is given chance to contest, Congress will do a vanishing act in future in the segment. Such possibility has been intimated to the state Congress leadership.
PNN
