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Odisha Panchayat Polls: BJP Makes Good Ground Coming Second To BJD In Phase One
An Indian election officer marks the finger of a voter at a polling station. (PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images)
Away from the election frenzy gripping the five poll-bound states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab and Manipur, the Panchayat polls in the state of Odisha are throwing up interesting results and possibly hint at a sign of things to come in 2019.
In the first phase of the polls which concluded Monday (13 February), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) earned 64 Zilla Parishad (ZP) seats, second only to the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which won 96, as reported by Odishatv.in. The BJP swept Kalahandi district, winning all of the nine ZP seats there.
This early performance of the BJP is a significant improvement over what it achieved in the state back in 2012, when it won 36 seats of the total 851. At the time, the BJD had taken as many as 651 seats, and the Congress had won 126. Pushing the Congress down to the third place this time, the BJP has opened up the battle for Odisha in 2019, when the state goes to polls simultaneously for the Lok Sabha and the state assembly.
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