Leaders fly, campaign expenditure going up

BHUBANESWAR: With the D-Day approaching, campaigning for the panchayat polls gets costlier with parties pumping more money into the electioneering and leaders going chopper-hopping to cover more areas. Taking a cue from Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, the Congress has also pressed into service one helicopter for campaigning. OPCC president Niranjan Patnaik on Saturday addressed election meetings at five places in three districts __ Sundargarh, Sambalpur and Jharsuguda. Niranjan covered the five places in  helicopter. He will campaign in Jajpur district on February 6. In the next three days, he will fly to Bhadrak, Balasore, Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj districts. The OPCC president is the only campaigner from the Congress to hit the air route for canvassing. He will be accompanied by former Union minister and Odisha in-charge Jagdish Tytler in his campaign trips in three days. Other star campaigners from the party, including Union Minister Srikant Jena, former OPCC president Jaydev Jena, former chief minister Hemananda Biswal and MP Pradip Majhi are, however, using four-wheelers for the campaign. For Naveen, who normally addresses six or eight election meetings in a day, the helicopter has come in handy. On Saturday, he campaigned in Ganjam district. He is scheduled to addressed election meetings in Kalahandi and Koraput districts on February 5 and 6. The BJD has also listed Rajya Sabha member Pyarimohan Mohapatra and party MPs __ Siddhant Mohapatra and Prasanna Patsani __ who are campaigning in different parts of the State for Zilla Parishad candidates, as star campaigners. However, the BJP has objected to use of helicopters in campaigning and crediting the expenditure to the account of the political parties concerned, and not that of the candidates. As panchayat polls, barring Zilla Parishad, are fought without party symbols, there should not be any central party funds for expenditure, BJP spokesman and State vice-president Ashok Sahu said. Stating that the State Election Commission (SEC) has not taken note of this, Sahu said expenditure limit of individual candidates will cross the limit, set by the Commission, if chopper expenses are added to their respective accounts. He said the BJP will file an objection with the SEC on the matter.