Bhubaneswar: The ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has registered a landslide victory in the panchayat elections announced by the State Election Commission. Out of the total 851 Zilla Parishad zones, the BJD has won a record number of 766 leaving the Opposition parties far behind. This year the ruling party had break its own record when compared to the 2017 elections.
In 2017, in panchayat polls, the ruling party had won 473 Zilla Parishad seats while this year party has won 290 more seats in 2022. BJD has secured 52.73 per cent votes out of the around 2.10 crore votes polled in the rural elections.
However, during these rural polls, the BJP came a distant second by winning only 42 seats against 297 in 2017. Congress came third by winning 37 Zilla Parishad zone seats. The grand old party had won 60 seats in the 2017 panchayat polls in Odisha. As the BJD has won a maximum of zones in all 30 districts, the Naveen Patnaik-led party is most likely to form all the ZPs.
An analysis of the 2022 rural poll results indicates that the biggest setback has been received by the BJP as the party lost 255 zones. Party failed to win even a single seat in as many as 10 districts- Jharsuguda, Deogarh, Mayurbhanj, Jajpur, Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur, Rayagada, Koraput, Malkangiri and Nabarangpur.
Congress fared quite well in at least four districts Koraput, Rayagada, Kandhamal and Bolangir. In Koraput, the party had given the BJD a run for its money by winning as many as 12 ZP seats. However, it couldn’t win a single ZP zone in as many as 18 districts, leaving the party much to introspect.
Read:71 per cent votes polled in second phase of Odisha panchayat elections
