As the high pitched campaigning ended for the third phase of polling in six Lok Sabha and 42 Assembly seats where polling will be held on Tuesday (April 23), all eyes are on the bureaucrats and top cops who have joined the fray.
They are Odisha’s popular former IAS officer Aparajita Sarangi, two super cops and retired IPS officers, Arup Mohan Patnaik and Prakash Mishra.
While Sarangi and Patnaik are pitted against each other as BJP and BJD candidates respectively in prestigious Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha seat, former Odisha DGP Prakash Mishra is a saffron party candidate in Cutatck Parliamentary constituency.
Mishra is pitted against BJD’s five-time MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, who is also the son of former Chief Minister Harekrushna Mahtab.
Sarangi, who quit the lucrative IAS service to dedicatedly serve the people of Odisha, is ahead of her top cop rival in Bhubaneswar seat in terms of popularity and acceptance. However, the former woman officer is finding it difficult in the battle field as the ruling BJD is strongly rooted in all the seven Assembly segments in Bhubaneswar.
During a span of only three and a half months Sarangi has covered more than 200 villages and about 100 wards and claimed to be getting rousing welcome from the people both in the rural areas as well as in the urban pockets. If the acceptance of the people is translated into votes, then Sarangi will make history as the Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha seat, in the grab of BJD since 1998.
Patnaik on the other hand is totally banking on the popularity of Naveen Patnaik and BJD’s stronghold over the area. The former Mumbai Police Commissioner is a gentleman and a positive personality.
Both Sarangi and Patnaik do not speak against each other, so also Mishra.
All the three former bureaucrats and top cops, though testing their luck for the first time, all of them maintain decency and never cross limit as regular politicians do during election time.
Apart from them, former Works Secretary Nalini Kanta Pradhan is fighting on BJD ticket from the Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat while former OFS officer Sarmista Sethi is a ruling party candidate in Jajpur Lok Sabha seat.
For the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spearheaded a campaign for the party candidates along with party president Amit Shah. BJP leaders including Union Ministers Uma Bharti, Nitin Gadkari, MukhtarAbbas Naqvi and Piyush Goyal also hit the campaign trail in the seat.
Though star campaigners of the Congress were absent in this phase and electioneering was steered by leaders like Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Niranjan Patnaik, BJD president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik was at the centrestage undertaking extensive tours of the poll-bound areas and holding road shows.
The third phase polling will decide the electoral fortune of 417 candidates - 61 in six Lok Sabha seats and 356 in 42 Assembly constituencies.
While there are six women candidates in the six Lok Sabha seats, 38 women are in the fray for the 42 Assembly segments.
As many as 92,56,922 voters will exercise their franchise in the Phase III.
