Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s BJD on Wednesday registered a comfortable victory in the Patklura election. Party’s Sabitri Agarwalla, widow of former MLA Bed Prakash Agarwal clinched the seat with 96,017 votes, ahead of the BJP’s  78,097 votes. The Congress meanwhile, suffered yet another rout in Odisha.
The election has attracted considerable attention as BJP’s Bijoy Mohapatra is considered an influential figure in coastal Odisha politics. Mohapatra, a powerful minister in former CM Biju Patnaik’s government and one of the founding members of the BJD in the nineties, fell out with Naveen Patnaik. Mohapatra, along with another Biju era heavyweight politician Dilip Ray, subsequently joined the BJP.