Bhubaneswar: The poll campaign has hit a high pitch ahead of the phase III polling for Lok Sabha and Assembly seats in Odisha scheduled for May 25.
Six Lok Sabha constituencies such as Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Sambalpur, Keonjhar and Dhenkanal will go to the polls along with the 42 Assembly segments in their jurisdiction on May 25.
Leaders of the three major political parties Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) are busy holding rallies and roadshows to woo the voters in favour of their party candidates as campaigning for the third phase of elections going to end today.
The curtain will come down on high-pitch electioneering to end today at 5 pm for which heavy-weight leaders are leaving no stone unturned to attract voters in large numbers. They are making last-minute efforts.
With just a few hours left for campaigning, prominent leaders of political parties are undertaking whirlwind tours of the constituencies.
This time, Cuttack will see the battle between BJP’s Bhartruhari Mahtab, BJD’s Santrupt Misra and Congress candidate Suresh Mohapatra. Similarly, Puri will witness a tough fight between BJD’s Arup Patnaik and BJP’s Sambit Patra. Besides, the state capital will witness intense fights between BJD’s Manmath Routray and BJP’s Aparajita Sarangi.
On the last day of the election campaign for phase III elections, JP president J P Nadda, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma will address election rallies in Odisha.
While Nadda will address meetings at Karanjia, Dhamnagar, Barchana and Balikuda, Adityanath, who will campaign in Odisha for the first time in this election, will address rallies at Chilika and Kulia, BJP’s state unit vice-president Golak Mohapatra said.
Most importantly, the Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat in Western Odisha will witness a high-profile contest as the ruling BJD has put up party general secretary (Organisation) Pranab Prakash Das against Union Education Minister and BJP’s Odisha face Dharmendra Pradhan.
Earlier, 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.
