BJD wins 112 Assembly seats, Biju Patnaik to be CM for 5th consecutive term

Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has once again established its political supremacy by winning 112 Assembly seats in 146-member House and paving the way for Naveen Patnaik to be the state's chief minister for the 5th consecutive term.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has overtaken the Congress party as the main opposition party by winning 23 seats. The Congress party has been able to win only nine seats. In 2014 Assembly elections, the BJD had got 117 seats and the BJP 10 seats. The Congress party had won 16 seats.

The vote share of BJD in the Assembly polls has been pegged at 44.7 per cent while that of the BJP at 32.5 per cent and the Congress' 16.12 per cent.

Patnaik, who defeated Pitambar Acharya of the BJP by a margin of 60,160 votes from Hinjili Assembly constituency, first became the state's chief minister in 1997. Since then, he has been winning all successive Assembly polls.

In the Lok Sabha polls, the BJD won 12 seats, BJP 8 and Congress one.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra lost from Puri parliamentary constituency to BJD's Pinaki Mishra by a margin of 11,700 votes.

Owning the moral responsibility for the party's defeat, Congress' state unit president Niranjan Patnaik has resigned from the post.

"I too had contested the election. The party had been given me responsibility. I take the moral responsibility for this debacle and relinquish this job. I have communicated it to my AICC president," Niranjan told ANI.