Bhubaneswar, April 15: In the Jayadev Assembly constituency, which is part of the Bhubaneswar Parliamentary constituency in Odisha, a triangular contest is set to be witnessed in the upcoming elections.
Jayant Bhoi, a member of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee, has been declared as the Congress nominee from this seat.
Interestingly, in 2009, Jayant contested the assembly election as a BSP candidate but faced defeat. Now, after 15 years, he is back in the electoral arena as the Congress candidate.
His supporters believe that he will put up a strong fight against both the BJD nominee Naba Kishor Mallick and BJP candidate Arabinda Dhali .
Arabinda Dhali, a former MLA, has recently switched allegiances from the BJD to the BJP.
He is now the BJP candidate from the Jayadev assembly seat.
Dhali has a track record of winning elections, in 2009 and 2019 as a BJD candidate.
The BJD has fielded Naba Kishor Mallick as its candidate this time.
In the 2019 elections, Naba Kishor had contested as an independent candidate against BJD candidate Arabinda Dhali and secured 44,300 votes.
Arabinda Dhali emerged victorious with 63,000 votes in that election.
Notably, the Congress did not field a candidate in 2019 election.
The Jayadev assembly constituency has been a bastion of the BJD for the past two decades. It witnessed victories by BJD candidates Raghav Charan Sethi (2000), Sashi Bhushan Behera (2004 and 2014), and Arabinda Dhali (2009 and 2019).
Now, with three strong contenders, the election in this reserved seat promises to be intriguing
