By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, March 23, 2022: About 40.5 lakh voters across 109 towns in Odisha will decide the fate of more than 6400 candidates in the urban body elections scheduled on Thursday. The poll is being held after a gap of around 10 years as it was not conducted on the due date in 2018.

Incidentally, voting will be held only in electronic voting machines from 8 am to 5 pm. More than 22,000 poll personnel started moving to the 4373 polling booths on Wednesday. The State Election Commission has made 2989 booths in 106 smaller towns and 1384 in three cities of Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Berhampur.

Around 200 platoons police have been placed to guard the booths. Elaborate security arrangements have been done to ensure an incident-free voting, state election commissioner Aditya Prasad Padhi said.

Official sources said 569 contestants are in fray for the posts of mayors and chairpersons of municipalities and notified area councils, the voting for which is being done directly for the first time in Odisha this time. Earlier, corporators/councilors used to select one of them as mayor or chairperson of the urban area concerned.

Though voters in 109 towns will select their city civic body chiefs, maximum attention are on the posts of mayors in the twin cities of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar, which never had a woman mayor earlier, has the post reserved for women this time.
As many as 5842 candidates are contesting for 1672 councilor posts in 47 municipalities, 59 NACs and 165 corporator posts in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Berhampur. Sixty-one candidates have been elected unopposed. Elections are not being held in Sambalpur, Rourkela and Puri due to pending court cases.

After a landslide victory in the recently held panchayat elections, the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD is facing the polls in a buoyant mood. The BJP and Congress are desperately trying to improve their respective performance in the towns after the bitter shows in villages.