The rest of the country may be animatedly discussing elections in post-riot Kandhamal,but this is perhaps the only year when the largely rural electorate of the district is showing no interest in the election. That too at a time when polls to both the Lok Sabha and the Orissa Assembly are happening simultaneously. With the elections happening in the aftermath of the bloodiest riots in Orissa history,there are little signs of election campaigning and banners in the villages. The Christians,who form about 30 per cent of the 10 lakh-plus electorate in the Kandhamal Lok Sabha constituency,have been the worst hit in the August and September 2008 riots in the aftermath of the killing of VHP leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati by Maoists last year. Of the 25,000 Christians who thronged various relief camps in Phulbani,Baliguda and G Udaygiri Assembly constituencies seven months ago,over 3,000 are still in five relief camps worried over their safety and security. Tell me would you be worried about elections when your house has been burnt and all your savings are gone in a flash? I am not even sure whether I will remain alive if I go back to my Totomaha village with my husband and three children. I have been sternly told to reconvert to Hinduism, said Lilima Digal,a Dalit Christian,while lunching on watery rice and mashed potato at the Mandakia relief camp. Whether Lilima votes or not will be known only on April 16 when the parliamentary constituency goes to polls like nine others in the state. However, it is for sure that Christian votes will play a major role in deciding the winner. Though Kandhamal has been the laboratory of Sangh Parivar since the 70s when Laxmanananda Saraswati arrived in the district,communal polarisation did not happen in Kandhamal till riots happened first in December 2007 and then in August 2008,the latter being bloodier than the first. The superbly agile VHP leader with a keenness for social activities,matched only by the Christian missionaries in the region,held sway over the majority Kondh tribals in 1,100-odd villages through his Sankirtan Mandalis (prayer groups). Saraswati and the Christian missionaries occasionally clashed,but it never came out in the open and never affected the elections. But with the Biju Janata Dal breaking off the 11-year-old alliance with the BJP,irked over the Kandhamal riots and thousands of Kondh tribals arrested after the riots and the BJP making Laxmananandas killing the central poll issue,the Hindu votes would surely be consolidated in at least two of the seven Assembly constituencies of the Lok Sabha election,thus deciding who the winner would be. With no issue in hand,the BJP is unashamedly playing the Hindutva card with its nominee Ashok Sahu already inviting trouble by delivering hate speeches against church leaders. He has already been booked by the Election Commission for a hate speech against Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Diocese Raphael Cheenath and Christian leaders from Kerala at a public meeting in Raikia block on April 5. Kandhamal (named Phulbani till 2004) was originally a Congress bastion,but it passed into the hands of the BJD in 1998 when Padmanabha Behera,a Dalit,won the seat on the BJD ticket after his party formed a pre-poll alliance with the BJP. In 1996,BJP candidate Sanjit Mandal had secured over 60,000 votes,and this vote expectedly went to the BJD. Though BJPs Ashok Sahu has a better profile than BJDs Rudra Madhab Ray and Sujit Padhi of the Congress,the fight would be between the BJD and Congress.
