It’s been a double win for the BJD in Orissa, with the party winning in both the Assembly and the Lok Sabha polls. The party, which had ended its decade-long alliance with the BJP and decided to go it alone in the polls with seat sharing arrangements with the CPI (M), CPI and the NCP, won 13 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats. The Congress came a distant second with seven seats. The CPI won in Jagatsinghpur while the BJP, which won seven seats in 2004, drew a blank.

The BJD bettered its 2004 tally of 11, winning at the expense of the Congress in seats like Koraput where its candidate Jayram Pangi vanquished nine-time winner Giridhar Gamang by over 85,000 votes. Gamang’s lobbying for Assembly tickets for his wife, son and PA had won him many detractors in the party.

In Kendrapara , BJD’s Rajya Sabha MP Jay Panda defeated Congress’s Ranjib Biswal by over 1.27 lakh votes. Supreme Court lawyer Pinaki Mishra, who switched from the Congress to the BJD just a few days before polls, trounced old rival and former union minister Braja Kishore Tripathy of the BJP by 1.80 lakh votes. Prasanna Patsani and Bhartruhari Mahtab retained Bhubaneswar and Cuttack seats respectively by huge margins.

The party’s Kalikesh Narayan Singh Deo won in the traditional BJP bastion of Bolangir. The BJD also won in the saffron seats of Mayurbhanj and Kenjhar. The biggest surprise win of the party, however, came in Berhampur where actor-turned-politician Siddhant Mohapatra trounced union minister and Congress candidate Chandrasekhar Sahu. The Congress, which increased its tally from two to six, scored surprise victories in Balasore, Sambalpur, Bargarh and Kalahandi.

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