Lok Sabha elections: Panda prestige vs Biju legacy in Odisha's Kendrapara

What may work for the BJP, on other hand, is the growing resentment against V K Pandian, a bureaucrat-turned-politician who Panda alleges has hijacked state govt. "Apart from anti-incumbancy

Nalini Kanta Mohanty and Bijoy Mohapatra — once close aides of Biju Patnaik and stalwarts from Odisha's Kendrapara — and Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda were with Naveen Patnaik when the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) was founded in 1997. Over time, Mohanty, Mohapatra, and Panda left the BJD after falling out with Chief Minister Patnaik.
 

Cut to 2024, the BJD has fielded Mohanty’s son, Anshuman, as the Lok Sabha candidate from Kendrapara against Panda, who's now with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Mohapatra's son Arvind, too, is the BJD candidate from the Patkura Assembly constituency.
 

Traditionally an anti-Congress seat, Kendrapara has elected the likes of Biju Patnaik, Rabi Ray, and Srikant Kumar Jena, who have become either Union ministers or the LS Speaker. Panda had won the seat twice when he was with the BJD in 2009 and 2014 but lost to actor-turned-politician Anubhav Mohanty in 2019 as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate by a margin of over 150,000 votes. Anubhav has now joined the BJP.

To retain the constituency, Patnaik has made organisational changes and welcomed into his fold Opposition leaders who contested the Assembly elections and whose votes added to Panda’s tally in 2019. Apart from bringing in Anshuman from the Congress (Rajnagar Assembly seat) and Arvind from the BJP (Patkura), Patnaik has fielded Congress veteran Ganeswar Behera, who came a close second in the Kendrapara Assembly seat. In the Aul Assembly seat, the BJD has retained Pratap Keshari Deb, whose father Sarat Kumar Deb was once a Biju Patnaik loyalist.
 

“In 2019, the BJD had won all the seven Assembly constituencies. Statistics are in favour of the BJD in the Lok Sabha polls,” said a BJD insider.
 

What may work for the BJP, on the other hand, is the growing resentment against V K Pandian, a bureaucrat-turned-politician who Panda alleges has hijacked the state government. “Apart from anti-incumbency, Panda is banking on the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” said a veteran journalist. The BJP has lined up Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Assam’s Himanta Biswa Sarma to campaign in the constituency.
 

“Both the sitting MP Anubhav Mohanty and Panda rarely visited the constituency after the polls,” said the journalist.