Odisha voters go for split voting; choose Naveen for state, Modi for centre

The Lok Sabha and Odisha Assembly elections were held simultaneously, but in many constituencies people have voted in favour of one party in the Parliamentary poll and for another in the state election.

Odisha has 21 Lok Sabha seats and 147 Assembly constituencies.

The Biju Janata Dal won 12 Lok Sabha seats while the BJP got eight and the Congress one but in the state Assembly election the BJD bagged 112 seats while the BJP won 23 and the Congress only nine.

In the prestigious Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha seat, former IAS officer Aparajita Sarangi, who contested as a BJP candidate, got the benefit of split votes.

She was elected to Lok Sabha by defeating her BJD rival and former Mumbai Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik by 23,939 votes though none of the saffron party candidates won in any of the seven Assembly seats under the Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha constituency.

Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha seat consists of seven Assembly segments -- Bhubaneswar-Central, Bhubaneswar-North, Ekamra- Bhubaneswar, Jatni, Jaydev, Khurdha and Begunia.

Sarangi recieved 486,991 votes (48.45 per cent) while all the seven BJP assembly candidates under the Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha seat together polled only 290,607 votes.

There has been a difference of 19.15 per cent vote between a Lok Sabha candidate and Assembly nominees polled. While Sarangi bagged 48.45 per cent of votes, the Assembly candidates together got 29.3 per cent of votes.

Similarly, in Koraput Lok Sabha seat, Congress candidate Saptagiri Ullaka was elected though most of the Assembly segments under its jurisdiction went in favour of ruling BJD.

There are seven assembly segments like Gubupour(BJD), Bissam Cuttack (BJD), Laxmipur (BJD), Koraput (BJD), Pottangi (BJD), Rayagada (Indpt) and Jeypore (Congress). Of the seven segments, Congress won in one seat even as Ullaka got 3,71,129 votes against his BJD rival Kausalya Hikka's 3,67,516 votes.

Ullaka won because people voted for different parties for Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

Similar was the situation in Balasore, Baragarh, Bolangir, Kalahandi, Sambalpur and Sundergarh Lok Sabha constituencies. However, in case of Mayurbhanj, the situation was different as the BJP candidates have also won in certain assembly segments.