BHUBANESWAR, March 5: With the present Lok Sabha elections, the Janata Dal (JD), assiduously built up by the late Biju Patnaik, has become extinct from the political map of the State.The performance of the JD in the 1996 elections was not spectacular either. The party won just four seats of which Biju won two.
That the popular base of the JD was shrinking even before the death of Biju was a striking fact. The Dal had even failed to hold on to the Cuttack seat in the by-election after Biju vacated it in favour of Aska. The split in the party before the polls and desertion of leaders and workers to the newly-formed Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has further weakened it.
However, the results of the 1998 polls have come as a rude shock to the Dal leadership in the State. Even senior Dal leaders are of the opinion that the party has already disintegrated and it would be very difficult to revive it now. The decimation of the JD at the national level has demoralised the party rank and file.
The JD received a bigjolt when Union Minister Srikant Jena, the only party candidate of national stature, lost badly from the Kendrapara seat. Jena was way behind BJD and Congress nominees.
Kendrapara was considered a pocketborough of Biju and the JD. It had returned him thrice in a row, former Speaker Rabi Ray twice and Jena was elected from the constituency in 1996. Its loss robbed JD of its last bastion.
In Jajpur and Cuttack, where the JD was expecting better performance, its hopes were shattered and the party finished a poor third. The loss in Jajpur has come as a personal loss for Dal president Ashok Das. Das had concentrated in the constituency during the entire campaign period. Here the party did poll more than one lakh votes but it finished third. In Cuttack also the party's performance was not so encouraging.
However, the general secretary of the State unit JD Narendra Kumar Swain said the party would be revived from the grass-roots level. A meeting will be convened to discuss the future course of action and toreview the poll results.
Two editors make it to Lok Sabha
Of the three newspaper editors who contested the 12th Lok Sabha elections from Orissa, two could make it, and one was defeated.
The loser is Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, the Congress candidate from the Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha constituency. Patnaik was defeated by Prasanna Patsani of the BJD by a margin of over 1.27 lakh votes. Patnaik edits two dailies, Sambad and Sun Times published from Bhubaneswar. Tathagat Satpathy, the editor of Dharitri, defeated former Union minister K P Singhdeo of the Congress from the Dhenkanal Lok Sabha constituency by a margin of over 32,000 votes. The Dharitri editor was the Janata Dal candidate from the Dhenkanal assembly constituency from 1990 to 1995.
Bhatruhari Mahtab, the editor of Prajatantra, contested from the Cuttack Lok Sabha constituency on a BJD ticket and defeated his Congress rival Mustafiz Ahmed by a margin of over 1.12 lakh votes. Ranjib Biswal, the managing editor of Samaya till his candidature wascleared by the party, was the most fortunate. Biswal, who resigned from the post when his candidature was cleared, trounced his BJD rival Trilochan Kanungo by a margin of over 19,000 votes to notch a win for Congress.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
