High pitched electioneering for Phase-V Lok Sabha poll ends

BHUBANESWAR: The curtains came down on Saturday on the high-pitched electioneering for five Lok Sabha seats and 35 assembly constituencies in the state, two days before the fifth phase of polling.
As many as 40 candidates for the Lok Sabha poll and 265 candidates for the assembly election made their last-minute efforts to woo voters amid sweltering heat.All five Lok Sabha seats - Aska, Balangir, Bargarh, Kandhamal, and Sundargarh - witnessed a high-pitched election battle between the candidates.
The candidates explored all options of electioneering, including the age-old door-to-door campaign, public connect marches, processions, rallies, meetings, outdoor, and social media campaigning to reach out to the maximum number of voters before the deadline of the election campaign ended amid political mudslinging, poll violence, and personal attacks.
Top brass of political parties, including Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP National President JP Nadda, Chief Ministers of Assam and Chhattisgarh, and Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, visited the state on different dates and campaigned for their candidates during the phase-II poll of Odisha assembly poll and phase-V of the Lok Sabha election.
The fate of BJD supremo Naveen Patnaik, who is contesting from two seats, Hinjili and Kantabanji, will be sealed in the EVMs on Monday. Some other prominent figures in the fray include India’s first Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram and legendary Indian Hockey captain Dilip Tirkey from the Sundargarh Lok Sabha seat, educationist and philanthropist Achyuta Samanta from the Kandhamal parliamentary constituency, and the royal couple Sangeeta Kumari Singh Deo from the Balangir LS seat and KV Singh Deo from the Patnagarh assembly segment.
At some places, candidates resorted to political mudslinging and personal attacks. A BJP worker was allegedly killed in a clash between BJP-BJD supporters at a village in the Khalikote assembly constituency under the Aska Lok Sabha seat, while two aides of Titilagarh BJP MLA candidate Nabin Kumar Jain were allegedly attacked on Thursday night.
BJD’s organisational general secretary Pranab Prakash Das said he is super confident that Naveen Patnaik will return with a bigger mandate. “We have been working hard to do very well this time. People have decided to bring him back for the good works to continue,” he added.
On her last day of the campaign in her area, Sangeeta Kumari Singh Deo, the BJP candidate for the Balangir parliamentary constituency, said the winds of change are sweeping through Odisha, heralding the dawn of a new chapter under the BJP government. “Odisha will choose a double-engine BJP government for the progress of the state,” she added.
Santosh Singh Saluja, the Congress MLA candidate for Kantabanji, said he covered the whole constituency by the end of the campaign. “I am hopeful for a positive result. I have sensitized people about the selection of a person of their own. The government has not fulfilled the demands of Kantabanji people before; I have made these demands an election issue,” he added.