The major takeaway from the Padampur byelection is that the grand old party has ceased to be an alternative in Odisha, once its bastion, amid the ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra by Rahul Gandhi to revitalise cadres and resurrect the Congress.
Satya Bhusan Sahu, a two-term MLA and veteran of the Congress, lost his security deposit despite winning the seat in the 2019 election with 32,787 votes. He was only able to garner 3,594 votes.
It was the second consecutive annihilation of Congress after Dhamnagar. While the BJP gained support from the Congress in the Dhamnagar byelection, it looks that the BJD in Padampur has totally captured the Congress vote. Due to its ineffective leadership and insufficient organisational capabilities, Congress may not be viewed as a viable alternative in the state.
The BJP has supplanted the party as the main Opposition in the state after the number of seats decreased to nine in 2019 from 16 in 2014, despite the party’s vote share continuing to erode since 2000. Additionally, the vote share decreased throughout the five-year period from 25.7 to 16.12 percent. While acknowledging defeat, Sahu asserted that he had won on moral grounds because “I fought the election fairly unlike the other two.”
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