Sambalpur the arena of big fight between Dharmendra Pradhan and Pranab Prakash Das in Odisha
Bhubaneswar: If there’s one constituency in Odisha to watch out for in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, it’s Sambalpur, where two of the state’s biggest political stalwarts, BJP’s Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and BJD’s organizing secretary Pranab Prakash Das, are facing off. . A high-profile battle for the ballot.
The ruling BJD surprised everyone by fielding Das from Sambalpur, the epicenter of western Odisha politics with a strong bias towards the coastal region of the state. Never before had any political party dared such an experiment.
While Das, a three-time MLA from Jajpur and the second-ranking leader in the BJD structure, accepted the challenge thrown by the party to take on Pradhan, the Union minister, though he does not have the burden of being an outsider like he once did. In 2004, he was elected from the then Deogarh Lok Sabha seat.
Following the delimitation exercise in 2008, Deogarh Lok Sabha seat consisting of Pallahara, Talcher, Brajrajnagar, Jharsuguda, Likera, Kuchinda and Deogarh assembly constituencies ceased to exist with the formation of Bargarh Lok Sabha constituency. The two assembly constituencies of Pallahara and Talcher were merged into Dhenkanal Lok Sabha seat, while Brajrajnagar and Jharsuguda segments became part of Bargarh Lok Sabha. Kuchinda and Deogarh are now under Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat.
The Deogarh parliamentary seat was also represented by his father, former Union Minister Debendra Pradhan, in 2000. After winning the seat in 2004, Pradhan Jr. contested the assembly elections from Pallahara in 2009 but lost. He has since stayed away from direct electoral politics and was involved in organizational activities before becoming a minister in the Modi cabinet as a Rajya Sabha MP in 2014 and continued after 2019.
Although he is returning to the electoral fray after 15 years, it is still an advantageous field for him as he is quite familiar with the political profile of the parliamentary constituency and has acceptance among the people as he hails from Talcher. Angul district.
Sambalpur was once a Congress stronghold, but the grand old party has lost the constituency since the alliance of BJD and BJP in 1998. BJD stalwart Prasanna Acharya was elected from this seat thrice in 1998, 1999 and 2004, but the party lost to Amar Pradhan. of Congress in 2009. However, BJD retained the seat in 2014, pushing sitting MP Pradhan to third place. BJP’s Suresh Pujari secured second place.
In 2019, BJD lost this seat to BJP by a small margin. The regional party had fielded retired chief engineer Nalini Kanta Pradhan, while Nitish Ganga Deb, scion of the Deogarh royal family, was the BJP candidate. Former MP and current president of Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee Sharat Patnaik had moved from Bargarh to Sambalpur in the election, but finished third.
This time Congress has fielded Dulal Chandra Pradhan from this seat. Politically, Dhurandhar Dulal has been the Vice President of Sambalpur District Athletics Association. Hailing from Rairakhol and based in Sambalpur, he had never contested any election before being selected for this Lok Sabha seat, a local leader said.
