Bhubaneswar, May 11 (Bureau) Notwithstanding the blistering heatwave conditions sweeping across Odisha, the hustle bustle of high voltage campaign in Southern region of the state, came to an end on Saturday to decide the fate of 37 candidates in four Lok Sabha seats and 243 candidates in 28 Assembly constituencies in the state. In the 2019 elections, the ruling BJD had won two of the four Lok Sabha seats while the BJP and Congress had won one each. Similarly, out of the 28 Assembly seats, the ruling BJD had captured a majority of 22 Assembly seats in 2019, while the BJP candidates won three seats, the INC two and the independent one seat. This is the first phase election in the state, polling of which will be held on May 13 spread over eight of 30 districts in the state while there will be three more phases which will be held on May 20, 25 and June 1.
The four Parliamentary constituencies going for polls on Monday are Berhampur, Kalahandi, Nabarangpur and Koraput, the last two being ST constituencies. Among the 37 candidates contesting the four Lok Sabha elections, seven are female candidates while the rest 30 are male.Similarly, out of 243 candidates in the fray for 28 Assembly seats, 211 are male and the rest 32 are female. State Chief Electoral Office (CEO) sources said an estimated 62,84,649 voters including 30,96,243 male, 3187,771 female and 635 transgender will exercise their franchise spread over 7303 polling booths of which 748 are in urban areas and the rest 6555 are in rural areas. The webcasting will be done in 60 percent of booths.
The new voters in the first phase constituted only 2.78 percent while the youth voters would be around 23.24 percent. There are 39,995 voters who are above 85 years of age while 1244 are above 100 years and 7296 are service voters. Among the four Parliamentary constituencies,Koraput has the lowest number of 14,80,992 voters and Kalahndi has the highest number of 17,00,780 voters. In the Assembly constituencies, Laxmipur has the lowest number of 1,73,721 voters and Dharamgarh has the highest number of 2,61,798 voters. As many as eleven candidates each are in the fray in Berhampur, Kalahandi and Koraput Lok Sabha seats while Nabarangpur has only four candidates in the fray. In the Assembly elections, a maximum number of 17 candidates are in the fray for Berhampur assembly seat while Jahrigam, Nabarangpur and Dabugam have the lowest number of three candidates. Out of 28 Assembly seats, 14 seats will have more than ten candidates in the fray. As per the ADR report, out of 37 candidates contesting the four Lok Sabha seats, 13 candidates have declared criminal cases pending against them, the highest being the 6 from BJP followed by BJD ( 4) and INC( 3) . The candidates of all the three major political parties –the BJD,BJP and the Congress, contesting the four lok Sabha seats are crorepatis. BJP’s Malavika Devi contesting the Kalahandi Lok sabha seat has the highest assets of Rs.41 crores while Pramila Pujari of SUCI contesting the Koraput Lok Sabha seat has the lowest assets of Rs.20,000 only.