CM constituency gets lion's share of funds

The people of Hinjili constituency of south Orissa’s Ganjam district have hardly any reason to complain as an estimated Rs 190 crore was spent in the past five years on improvement of infrastructure facilities in two blocks- Hinjili and Sheragada- falling within the constituency.

“We have almost all the infrastructure facilities like road, water, power, mobile services and health centres due to the efforts of the chief minister and we are proud of sending him from here” said Nivedita Pradhan, the sarpanch of Takarada panchayat under Sheragada block. Sheragada block is now included in the Hinjili constituency following the process of delimitation. Purushottampur, the block which was earlier with this segment was omitted and tagged with Khallikote. Hinjili is the constituency of the state chief minister and Bjiu Janata Dal (BJD) supremo Naveen Patnaik who has won the Assembly elections twice from this constituency. Patnaik is seeking re-election from the Hinjili assembly constituency this time and his supporters hope that the BJD supremo will score a hat trick. The BJD supremo fought the assembly elections from Hinjili in 2000 and later in 2004.

Though the BJD supporters are optimistic of Patnaik’s victory from Hinjili this time, they are concerned about the winning margin. In the2004 Assembly elections in the state, Patnaik had won from the Hinjili assembly seat by a margin of 26,417 votes over his Congress rival, the victory margin went up to 42,642 votes in the 2004 elections.

In 2000 as well as 2004 polls, Udayanath Nayak had contested against Patnaik on a Congress ticket. Nayak has now resigned from the Congress and has joined the BJD. In the 2009 Assembly elections, Patnaik is pitted against Raghab Parida, another Congress leader.While there is no major issue to be raised against the chief minister, Laxmi Narayan Panda, an independent candidate in the fray from Hinjili has raked up the issue of Kandhamal riots.