Jagatsinghpur: The Tirtol Assembly seat is reserved for candidates from Scheduled Castes, and hectic parleys have begun in all parties to select candidates.
The BJD’s Dr Rajashree Mallick is the sitting MLA in this constituency. But the ruling party is facing infighting, and has to put down dissidence first to win the election this time.
The infighting plaguing the party is a matter of grave concern and a subject of discussion in state politics.
MLA Rajashree and Jagatsinghpur district unit BJD president Bishnu Charan Das are not on good terms, and that is the main reason behind the infighting in the party.
The dissident group lodged a complaint against Rajashree with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik some time ago.
BJD leaders have made several attempts to end dissidence and restore discipline in the party but in vain.
This time Rajashree wants to contest from this seat on a BJD ticket, but her opponents want Bishnu as the party candidate.
Rajashree said she will abide by the decision of the party high command in selecting candidates. She said that she will support Bishnu if the party decides to field the latter from Tirtol.
On the other hand, Bishnu said he had failed to serve the people of Tirtol, Raghunathpur and Biridi even though the people had a lot of expectations from him.
Bishnu said the candidates he had allowed to contest in 2009 and 2014 have disappointed the people, and he hopes to contest this time from this constituency.
Biju Mahila Janata Dal president Minati Behera is also in the race. She became a member of Zilla Parishad Zone-3 from Tirtol in 1997 as a Janata Dal candidate, and was the district president of the BJD in 2005.
She became the party’s women’s wing president in undivided Cuttack district and the state vice-president of the party’s women’s wing in 2005-10. She was nominated as the commissioner for the disabled in 2015-18.
She said she will focus on organisational matters if she does not get the BJD ticket.
Ramakant Bhoi, who was earlier working in an engineering college, is the only hopeful from the BJP. He started his political career in 2014. He joined the saffron party after he failed to get the BJD ticket, and is now a member of its state executive.
He has worked hard to strengthen the BJP by organising several public movements in the last five years. Ramakant said programmes launched under his leadership have attracted the people to the BJP.
The Congress has three hopefuls, namely, Debendra Mallick, Rajkishore Behera and Pratima Mallick.
Debendra entered politics when his uncle, the late Krushna Chandra Mallick, was an MLA of the Congress. Debendra was the president of the Youth Congress in Jagatsinghpur block.
He became the secretary of the party’s Scheduled Caste cell in Jagstinghpur district in 2004 and its chairman in 2014. He was also the vice-president of Tirtol block Congress committee and his wife was a member of the Tirtol panchayat samiti.
In 2016, he was appointed as the state convener of the party’s Scheduled Caste cell and is a member of the district Vigilance Monitoring Committee for four years.
Debendra had filed his nomination last time from this Assembly seat, but withdrew as per the advice of Jagatsinghpur MLA Chiranjiv Biswal. He hopes the party will nominate him as its candidate this time.
Rajkishore Behera is another hopeful who started his political career through student politics.
He was appointed as the convener of the District Legal Cell in 2000. He was also a member of the Jagatsinghpur ZP Zone-3 in 2002-07 and of ZP Zone-4 in 2007-12. He contested twice from this seat in 2009 and in 2014, but was defeated.
Another hopeful in the race is Pratima Mallick, who is the daughter of former MLA, the late Lakshman Mallick.
She contested from this seat in 2009, but was defeated. She is currently the vice-president of the state women’s Congress and was its general secretary for six years.
Pratima tried to contest from Tirtol in 2014 unsuccessfully, but hopes the party will nominate her this time. She said she will continue to work for the party even if she does not get the ticket.
PNN