New Delhi: Union Education Minister and BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhan is leading by 17,885 votes in the Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat of western Odisha, ahead of Pranab Prakash Das of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) as of 11 am per Election Commission of India data.
Pradhan, seen as a potential candidate for Odisha chief minister, has garnered 81,086 votes compared to Das’s 63,201. Congress’s Nagendra Kumar Pradhan is trailing at a distant third with 11,898 votes.
Contesting Lok Sabha elections after 15 years, Pradhan previously served two terms in the Rajya Sabha, and was the party’s election in-charge for key states such as West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh.
Odisha BJP sources said that Pradhan started his groundwork in Sambalpur over a year ago, frequently visiting it to meet the constituents.
The last time Pradhan had contested was in the 2009 assembly elections, where BJD’s Rabi Narayan Pani defeated him from the Pallahara seat. Before that, he had won the Deogarh Lok Sabha seat in 2004.
BJD’s Pranab Prakash Das, the 51-year-old three-time MLA from Jajpur seat, had put all his party’s organisational might into his campaigning. He has been the BJD’s organisational secretary since 2020 and is considered third in the party’s hierarchy after Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and his close aide VK Pandian.
Sambalpur is located in western Odisha, considered a BJP stronghold. The incumbent MP was Nitesh Ganga Deb of the BJP, who was dropped this election. However, the seat was won thrice by BJD’s Prasanna Acharya in 1998, 1999, and 2004. Acharya is contesting from the Rairakhol assembly seat this time.
In an interview to ThePrint in April, Pradhan had said that the BJP doesn’t agree with the approach of the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD to Odisha’s asmita (pride) and self-respect, citing this as one of the reasons why the BJP did not want to tie up with the BJD.
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