The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) retained the Padampur Assembly seat in Odisha by defeating the BJP with a margin of over 42,000 votes.

Chief minister and BJD supremo Naveen Patnaik thanked the people of Padampur for reposing trust in his party. Later Naveen spoke to the party candidate Barsha Singh Bariha and congratulated her. The BJD won the bypoll by a margin of 42,679 votes.

While the BJD fetched 1, 20, 807 votes, the BJP got 78,128 votes and Congress managed to get only 3,594 votes. The bye-election was held on December 5.

The BJP, which had won the Dhamanagar bye-election held in November and was able to retain its seat, pulled out all the stops to win the Padampur seat where party stalwarts including railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar, education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhubaneswar MP Aparajita Sarangi and a number of other leaders had campaigned for the BJP candidate Pradeep Kumar Purohit.

During the campaign, all the Union ministers had launched an attack on the BJD by raking up the issues of railway connectivity to Padampur and the issue of insurance to farmers under Pradhanmantri Fasal Bima Yojana.

Even ahead of Tomar’s visit, the Centre released insurance money for farmers of Padamapur under the PMFBY.

However, the BJD effectively countered the move with Naveen Patnaik taking the lead in making a counterattack and accusing the BJP of misleading the people and how they delayed payments of insurance money for 18 months. Since the result of this seat was crucial for the BJD, Naveen took no chances.

He joined the election campaign and held meetings at three places in the Assembly constituency. He made 29-year-old Barsha, the eldest daughter of the party MLA Bijay Ranjan Singh Bariha whose death in October necessitated the election, the BJD candidate for the Padampur seat.

The sympathy factor contributed to the win of the BJD’s candidate.

“I would work hard to solve the basic issues of the constituency. However, I am pained by the way the BJP leaders stooped to such a level to attack me on personal ground,” said Barsha after the win.

BJP wins Kurhani seat

The BJP wrested the Kurhani Assembly seat in Bihar from the ruling Grand Alliance in the bypoll result on Thursday after a see-saw battle that went almost till the last round of counting.

The BJP candidate Kedar Prasad Gupta defeated Manoj Singh Kushwaha of JDU by 3,649 votes.

Gupta had lost to the RJD candidate Anil Kumar Sahani in the 2020 Assembly elections by 712 votes.

The seat fell vacant earlier this year after the latter was convicted and disqualified as an MLA in a railway ticket forgery case.

The loss is being seen as a big blow to the Grand Alliance as chief minister Nitish Kumar and almost his entire cabinet, including deputy chief minister and RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, had come together to campaign for the bypoll.

Additional reporting by Dev Raj