Pressure appears to be mounting on Niranjan Patnaik, president of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC), to relinquish his position following a series of poll debacles since 2019. The Congress drew a blank in 18 out of 30 districts in the recently concluded elections to three-tier Panchayati Raj institutions in the State.
This is in continuation of the poor performances visible ever since the Congress slid from its position as the principal Opposition party down to the third place in the State Assembly in 2019. The party performed disastrously in the three byelections in Balasore, Jagatsinghpur and Pipili.
In the Pipili bypoll, the Congress candidate, Biswokeshan Harichandan Mohapatra, had managed to get only 4,261 (or 4.39% of) votes secured by Biju Janata Dal (BJD) candidate.
