Sitting BJD MP Pinaki Misra has retained his Puri Lok Sabha seat by defeating BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra by a margin over 11,000 votes.
Apparently because of the Modi wave, Misra had to face a tough fight this time with his BJP rival considering the fact that he had won the seat by a margin of over two lakh votes in 2014.
Patra was ahead in most of the rounds when the counting began, but later in the late evening Misra took a lead which helped him seal his fourth straight victory from the seat. Misra got 5,37,782 votes against Patra’s 5,24,504.
The Puri Lok Sabha seat has Puri, Brahmagiri, Satyabadi, Pipili, Chilika, Ranpur and Nayagarh Assembly segments.
For the first time, the BJP won the Puri Assembly seat with its candidate Jayanta Sarangi defeating BJD strongman Maheswar Mohanty by a margin of less than 2,000 votes. In Bramhagiri, BJP candidate Lalitendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra trounced his BJD contestant Sanjay Dasburma also by a close margin of less than 2,000 votes.
The pro-BJP votes in the Puri and Bramhagiri segments narrowed down Pinaki Misra’s winning margin.
