The chill of ongoing winter is likely to subside a little in Odisha in January next as political temperature in the State promises to soar high with central leaders of the BJP and the Congress hitting the campaign trail here ahead of the 2024 general elections to Lok Sabha and State Assembly.

From the BJP side, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead from the front, sources said. On the other hand, Rahul Gandhi will spearhead his party’s electoral battle against the BJD led by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

The BJD’s vote share, as per the 2022 gram panchayat polls, stands at a whopping 52.73 per cent as against 30.07 per cent of the BJP and 13.57 per cent of the Congress.

The BJP saw a 2.42-per cent drop in its vote share in comparison to its 2019 performance in State Assembly polls. And the share of the Congress vote slipped by 2.55 per cent.

The results of the rural polls in Odisha, which came just two years before the Assembly elections, are mostly considered as major indicators of a party's strength across the State and in specific zones. Of the State’s total electorate, nearly 80 per cent live in rural areas. Thus, the rural poll results provide political parties an opportunity for self-assessment of their strength, besides prompting them to redesign and redraft their strategies for the general elections.

The BJP, which had set a target of winning 120 of the State’s 147 Assembly seats in 2019, found itself getting restricted to only 23 seats. Its weak organisational infrastructure could not match the ruling party’s well-organised election machinery. The only consolation for the saffron party was that it got eight of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the State.

The Congress slumped from 16 seats in the Assembly in 2015 to nine in 2019. This time, the new Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) has set a target of 90 seats.