General Elections 2014: Odisha —State Profile

Tarun Khanna

An Indian state on the subcontinent`s east coast, Odisha has 21 Lok Sabha constituencies. Out of these 21 constituencies, 5 are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) and 3 are reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC).

Main political parties in the state are BJD, INC, BJP, BSP, CPI, CPI(M),NCP, JMM, AITMC, JD(U), RSP and SP.

Odisha also has a number of registered unrecognised parties which are Bharatiya Jan Shakti (BJSH),Indian Justice Party (IJP),Kalinga Sena (KS) and Lok Satta Party (LSP).

Although Congress was preferred till 1980`s, the BJP-BJD combine grew in strength during the 1990`s and early 2000.

BJD had an alliance with BJP in Odisha and it also supported the NDA in the centre since 1998 till 2009 when Naveen Patnaik decided to break the alliance.

In the 2009 General Elections, BJD contested at its own and won 14 seats with a gain of 3 seats from previous elections in 2004. On the other hand, INC won six seats and CPI won one seat.

In the 2009 Assembly elections in the state, the BJD came back to power by winning 103 seats out of 147 seats. However, INC won 27 seats, BJP won 6, NCP won 4, CPI won 1 and remaining six seats went to independent candidates.

BJD’s Naveen Patnaik is the Chief Minister of Odisha from March 2000 till date.

2014 General Elections in the state are scheduled to be held on April 10 and April 17.