Bhubaneswar, March 12: With the assembly elections two years away, warning bells have started ringing for the ruling Congress in Orissa which trailed in 106 out of the 147 assembly segments behind the new BJP-BJD combination in the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls.The Congress had won 80 seats in the 1995 polls to replace Janata Dal government in the state.
The party suffered a massive defeat in the parliamentary polls by winning only five of the 21 Lok Sabha seats while the rest 16 were wrested by the alliance with BJD claiming nine and BJP seven.
Segment-wise figures of the elections, released by the election office here on Wednesday, showed that Congress had trailed in 55 of the 80 seats it had in the legislature while retaining 25 of them.
The party gained in 16 seats, seven each of which are held by BJD and JD in the assembly and two represented by independents to establish leads in 41 segments.
The Congress finished second behind the BJD or BJP candidates in 101 segments and ended third in five.
The BJD, which contested 12 Lok Sabha seats and won nine, led in 55 of the 84 assembly segments while finishing second in 24. Its electoral ally, BJP, contested nine seats comprising 63 assembly segments performed impressively to lead in 50 while ending up second in 13 segments of the Berhampur, Nawarangpur (ST) and Balasore Lok Sabha constituencies.
BJD had 29 members in the assembly before the Lok Sabha polls while BJP had 10.
The worst debacle, however, was registered by the erstwhile main opposition party, Janata Dal.
The JD, which suffered a split leading to the formation of BJD in December last, fielded nominees in 16 Lok Sabha seats but failed lead in any of the 112 assembly segments.
The party candidates were placed second in four segments, third in 97 segments and finished even lower in 11.
Of the 29 assembly seats held by BJD, the party led in 15 and alliance partner BJP in seven while Congress gained the rest.
BJP led in seven of the 10 seats it held in the assembly while BJD led in three.
BJP established leads in all seven segments of five Lok Sabha seats while BJD and Congress did so in the Bhubaneswar and Jajpur (SC) constituencies, respectively.
Of the 55 segments in which Congress trailed, 20 were held by ministers including one by chief minister J B Patnaik (Begunia).
The other ministers in whose assembly constituencies the Congress trailed include deputy chief minister Hemananda Biswal (Laikera-ST), Prasanna Kumar Das (Baripada), Jagannath Patnaik (Khariar), Bhagabat Prasad Mohanty (Kendrapara), Kanhu Charan Lenka (Choudwar), Bhupinder Singh (Kesinga), Durga Shankar Patnaik (Sambalpur), Kishore Chandra Patel (Sundergarh) and Niranjan Patnaik (Ramchandrapur), all of cabinet rank.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
