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Candidates of all parties woo Bengali settlers

| Sunday | 31st March, 2019

As the majority of the settlers from Malkangiri are farmers, they have been provided with irrigation facilities,” said Ramesh.He said community halls had been constructed for the Bengali settlers, Bengali books have been made available in schools in Malkangiri and Bengali teachers appointed as the children faced problems in reading and writing Odia. “The support of the Bengali voters is important for any tribal candidate aspiring to win the election. Undoubtedly, the Bengali diktat will prevail in Nabarangpur constituency,” said a political analyst.Though Malkangiri, where most of the Bengali settlers live, has always been anti-Congress, the party made inroads into the Bengali villages and its candidate Pradeep Majhi won the seat in 2009. Balabhadra will now contest as a BJP candidate while BJD has fielded Ramesh Chandra Majhi.“The state government has taken many steps for the development of Bengali settlers in the past five years. However, in the 2014 election, Congress lost it to BJD’s Balabhadra Majhi by a narrow margin of just over 2,000 votes.

Koraput: With Bengali migrant settlers holding the key to Nabarangpur Lok Sabha seat by virtue of their population, candidates of all three major parties — Congress, BJP and BJD — are making desperate attempts to win them over.There are over one lakh Bengali voters under the Nabarangpur parliamentary segment, which consists of four assembly segments of Nabarangpur district, two segments of Malkangiri district and one of Koraput district.The Bengalis, who have migrated from Bangladesh, live in as many as 213 villages in Malkangiri district and 64 villages in Nabarangpur district after acquiring citizenship in the early Seventies. Almost all of them belong to the scheduled castes. “The support of the Bengali voters is important for any tribal candidate aspiring to win the election. Undoubtedly, the Bengali diktat will prevail in Nabarangpur constituency,” said a political analyst.Though Malkangiri, where most of the Bengali settlers live, has always been anti-Congress, the party made inroads into the Bengali villages and its candidate Pradeep Majhi won the seat in 2009. However, in the 2014 election, Congress lost it to BJD’s Balabhadra Majhi by a narrow margin of just over 2,000 votes. Balabhadra will now contest as a BJP candidate while BJD has fielded Ramesh Chandra Majhi.“The state government has taken many steps for the development of Bengali settlers in the past five years. As the majority of the settlers from Malkangiri are farmers, they have been provided with irrigation facilities,” said Ramesh.He said community halls had been constructed for the Bengali settlers, Bengali books have been made available in schools in Malkangiri and Bengali teachers appointed as the children faced problems in reading and writing Odia. “In 2014, Bengali voters had chosen BJD and I am confident that this time, too, they will vote for us,” said Ramesh.The BJP, which always enjoyed the support of the settlers, is reportedly losing grip over them with former Malkangiri MLA Arabinda Dhali, himself a settler, joining the ruling BJD during the 2009 polls. Expressing confidence that the Bengalis would back the saffron party, Balabhadra said, “Bengalis want to see Modi as Prime Minister and for this they will vote for BJP.”The support of the settlers had played a role in the victory of BJP in the Nabarangpur LS seat in 1999 and 2004.

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