Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat: BJP's Dharmendra Pradhan wins with 5,92,162 votes

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan won from Odisha’s Sambalpur seat, where he was contesting against Biju Janata Dal’s (BJD) organisational secretary Pranab Prakash Das. He won with 5,92,162 votes with a margin of 1,19,836 votes.

Pradhan ran in direct elections after 15 years, and the BJD is strongly opposing him. Many see this as a fight between the leaders of the two parties.

On the last day of voting in the LS polls, Pradhan prayed at Odisha’s Jagannath Temple and said, “Today was the last day of elections in the country. I have come to pay obeisance to Mahaprabhu today, and this is my good fortune. ”

He last ran for elections in 2009 after the BJP-BJD alliance broke up. He lost that assembly election. Pradhan was elected to the Odisha Assembly in 2000 and to the Lok Sabha from the Deogarh seat in 2004. He became a member of the Rajya Sabha from Bihar in 2012 and then from Madhya Pradesh again in 2018.

Pradhan, a Rajya Sabha MP, is competing against Nagendra Pradhan from the Congress and Pranab Prakash Das from the BJD on behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In 2019, BJP's Nitesh Ganga Deb won the Sambalpur seat with 4,73,770 votes. BJD candidate Nalini Kanta received 4,64,608 votes, and Congress's Sarat Patnaik came in third with 1,35,969 votes, far behind.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJD won the most seats in the state, with 12. The BJP came in second with 8 seats, and the Congress only won one seat.

Pradhan won seats in the Odisha Assembly in 2000 and in the Lok Sabha from the Deogarh constituency in 2004. However, he lost the assembly elections in 2009. He then became a member of the Rajya Sabha from Bihar in 2012 and was re-elected in 2018 from Madhya Pradesh. The 2024 Lok Sabha elections will be a big challenge for Pradhan, as the BJP is contesting without an alliance with the BJD.