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The countdown for the first phase of voting of Odisha Panchayat elections has begun. On the coming Wednesday, a massive 67 lakh rural voters across the State will vote for 202 Zilla Parishad constituencies (or zones).
Even as voting will take place in 202 Zilla Parishads across the State, the maximum of 16 constituencies in Ganjam district will go to polling and a minimum of 3 constituencies will witness polling in Deogarh district.
On Feb 16 (Wednesday), a total of eight constituencies in Angul district will go to the polls. In the last Panchayat election (2017), BJP won in 1 Zilla Parishad constituency and BJD won in the rest of the seats.
2022 Equation- In Angul District
A total of 8 Zilla Parishad constituencies in two blocks of Angul and Banarpal will be witnessing voting on the coming Wednesday. As per SEC data, the total electors will be over 2.7 lakh
The voter dynamics of the Angul district in 2022 reveals a rise in electors by over 40,900 vis-a-vis the total electors in 2017.
Electors And Elections
A glance at the electoral data of the district shows that the total electors in the 2012 Panchayat polls were over 7.8 lakh. The count went up to touch 8.43 lakh in 2017. In 2022, the total number of voters in the district has been estimated at over 8.839 lakh.
This shows around 41,000 voters in the district will exercise their franchise for the first time in 2022 rural polls. In 2017, the district saw the addition of around 60k new voters.
The political dynamics of the Angul and Banarpal is this is the forte of BJD leader and Deputy Speaker in Odisha Assembly Rajnikanta Singh. He has been winning the seat since 2004.
The BJD has had a solid vote base in the Blocks of Angul and Banarpal since 1977. For which, when BJD-BJP had an alliance in 1998, during 2000 Assembly polls the seat went to BJD quota. And since then BJD has been maintaining dominance in the two Blocks.
Modi Era
Though the ruling BJD had enjoyed a nearly 50 percent vote share in the two Blocks, with the beginning of the Modi era in Indian politics and the resultant weakening of the Indian National Congress, BJP's vote share went up to touch around 36 percent in the two Blocks, especially in Banarpal Block. In 2012, the BJP vote share was a little over 9 percent.
Meanwhile, in 2017, BJD polled nearly 41 percent of the total valid votes, whereas the Congress vote bank took a nosedive to a mere 19 percent from over 33 percent in 2012.
The 2017 poll arithmetic shows BJD maintained a lead of around 5 percent over the nearest BJP rival in Angul and Banarpal. As a consequence, the BJP could win only 1 Zilla Parishad constituency of the total 8 that had gone to the polls. While BJD made a clean sweep in Angul, BJP snatched a lone seat in Banarpal.
Given that BJD's voter base is around 5 percent higher than BJP, the challenge to wrest more constituencies in the two Blocks for the saffron party remains very high.
However, a chance for BJP exists in the Zill Parishad constituencies. Data shows the disintegrating Congress votes have shifted towards the saffron party. Because the votes polled by BJD in 2017 registered a decline.
In the backdrop of the poor organisational capacity of Congress in the Blocks, the task before BJP has been to wean away the voter base of Congress to gain inroads into the BJD citadel.
But the same applies to BJD too. If the ruling party becomes successful in co-opting the Congress vote bank, it may go for a clean sweep in the two Blocks. But the rider is the Congress votes are anti-establishment votes.
The Bottomline
In the above poll dynamics, even as the BJD seems to have an upper hand in the two Blocks, the fighting point for BJP lies in winning over the number of new beneficiaries who have availed the Modi government's welfare schemes between 2017 and 2022.
