Bhubaneswar: Biju Janata Dal candidate Rita Sahu Thursday made history in Odisha politics by winning the Bijepur seat with a margin of 97,990 votes.
There were five candidates in the fray. Rita polled 1, 35, 957 votes while BJP’s Sanat Kumar Gartia got 37, 967 votes and Congress candidate Dilip Kumar Panda polled 5,873 votes. Independent candidates Ashok Kumar Mittal polled 1219 votes and Brundaban Purohit polled 1053 votes.
There were 1982 NOTA votes in the bypoll. Sahu has secured over 73 per cent of the total polled votes while Gartia has garnered around 20 per cent of it.
Congress nominee Dilip Kumar Panda secured the third position by polling 5,876 votes.
With Sahu’s victory, the BJD’s strength in the state’s 147-member Assembly has increased to 113.
“Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik congratulated Rita Sahu for her huge historic win, breaking all records in the state’s electoral history,” the CMO said.
Sahu’s victory margin is higher than Patnaik’s 57,122 margin, which he registered in the elections held earlier this year.
The by-election to the politically-sensitive seat was necessitated after Patnaik, who had won from two seats in the Assembly polls, resigned from Bijepur and retained his home-turf Hinjilicut in Ganjam district.
In the Assembly polls held earlier this year, Soumya Ranjan Patnaik of the BJD had won by a margin of 81,430 votes from Khandapada seat, which was the highest till Sahu’s victory.
Following the BJD’s win, celebrations erupted at its party offices in Bhubaneswar and Bargarh.