By: Debabrata Mohapatra and Ritesh kumar sharmaBHUBANESWAR/JHARSUGUDA: With elections round the corner, it will be a testing time for Congress to find a suitable person to replace Naba Kishore Das at Jharsuguda assembly constituency. Naba Kishore resigned from the party on Wednesday and is expected to join the BJD soon. Jharsuguda has been a Congress stronghold so far with Naba Kishore representing it since 2009.Though Congress state president Niranjan Patnaik dispelled apprehensions of an adverse impact on the party following Naba Kishore’s exit, political analysts said it will be extremely difficult for the party to fill the void. Analysts said Jharsuguda was the only district where Congress had put up an impressive show in the 2017 panchayat election. Congress, which had won 128 Zilla Parishad (ZP) seats across the state in the 2012 panchayat polls, managed only 60 seats out of the total 849 ZP zones in 2017. But in Jharsuguda, the party won eight of the total nine ZP seats.“Naba Kishore was the lone saving grace for Congress in the February 2017 panchayat polls. His leadership had helped Congress sweep Jharsuguda during the rural election. While BJP managed to win only one ZP seat, BJD had failed to open an account in the district. So, Naba Kishore will be a big asset for BJD in Jharsuguda and some other western Odisha pockets,” said Prashant Mohanty, a political analyst.Some observers said Naba Kishore had successfully guarded the Congress bastion in Jharsuguda even after the exit of former MLA and secretary of Congress legislature party, Anup Sai, in the run-up to the 2014 elections. Sai was a three-time MLA from Brajarajnagar in Jharsuguda district BJD leader and former assembly speaker Kishore Mohanty, who was defeated by Naba Kishore twice in Jharsuguda constituency, said he has no problem with him joining the party.“We are disciplined members of BJD. We will work together for the party’s success,” said Kishore, who is BJD’s Jharsuguda district president.Congress faces setback in Jharsuguda nearly a year after its base was almost wiped out in Ganjam district following mass resignations of prominent leaders, including former Union minister Chandrasekhar Sahu, who subsequently joined BJD.The Congress also received a jolt in the run-up to Bijepur assembly bypoll in February 2018. Bijepur seat, which had been represented by Subal Sahu of Congress for three terms since 2004, went to BJD in the 2018 bypoll after his family joined the ruling party. Subal’s wife Rita won the bypoll on a BJD ticket.

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