Summary:
Patra has been making few flamboyant attempts to get closer to people through acts like taking food in a poor man’s house or similar such tricks.
Given the fact that Puri had mainly remained a BJD bastion for last two decades except few segments like Brahmagiri once used to be a Congress fort represented by the swashbuckler face of the party, late Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra.
By D.N.Singh
.
From the blaze of television debates to the dusty tracks of election campaign is an apparent paradigm shift that the national spokesman of the Bharatiya Janta Party, Sambit Patra is in for.
At the kick-start itself Patra stumbled across a faux pas by holding up a tiny image of Lord Jagannath of Puri after the ‘darshan’.
Patra, who has been fielded for the Puri Lok sabha seat must have thought, perhaps, that there was no easier means to stoke the local sentiments than show-casing the image of the presiding deity.
There only he faulted and faced a legal slap for violating the Model Code of Conduct.
A case in this regard was filed with the local poll authorities besides an FIR at the local police station.
That is already history.
In his subsequent campaigning Patra must be facing an uphill task to inlay his image as a political leader to start with.
Real politics had never been his forte and his fresh assignment must require a lot of hard work to build up the grounding in all the Assembly segments of Puri Lok sabha.
Not that Sambit Patra is an alien entity but all the assembly segments in this parliamentary constituency have BJD MLAs in place and that is the most crucial area for Patra to cruise in and create the footprints and that requires a strong organisational strong-hold to match the blitzkrieg of the BJD.
Patra has been making few flamboyant attempts to get closer to people through acts like taking food in a poor man’s house or similar such tricks.
Given the fact that Puri had mainly remained a BJD bastion for last two decades except few segments like Brahmagiri once used to be a Congress fort represented by the swashbuckler face of the party, late Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra.
Whereas, the BJD has retained almost all the old faces in the Assembly segments to ensure that the party’s sitting Lok sabha MP does not face any headwind at this juncture.
When the BJP has fielded Patra and it is explicit that, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi may get Puri included in his itinerary for campaigns.