Bhubaneswar: Odisha’s ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) on Thursday released its last list of three candidates for the assembly elections. The party fielded Sukanta Nayak for Nilagiri seat, while Sabitri Pradhan was named as the candidate for Khandapara.
Sandhyarani Das, the mother of BJD’s organizing secretary Pranab Prakash Das, was nominated to contest from Korei seat in Jajpur district.
Pranab Prakash Das, considered to be the third most powerful politician in the BJD after Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and his close aide V Karthikeyan Pandian, is contesting Lok Sabha polls from Sambalpur. He is pitted against senior BJP leader and Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Nagendra Pradhan of Congress.
The BJD president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, while announcing the candidates’ list, declared that the party replaced the Deogarh seat candidate Arudhanti Devi with Romancha Ranjan Biswal.
On April 17, Arundhati Kumari Devi was named as the BJD candidate for Deogarh.
With this list, the BJD has declared candidates for all 147 assembly constituencies for the upcoming state elections.
Romancha Ranajn Biswal had fought the previous Assembly elections from the Deogarh constituency but lost to Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Subash Chandra Panigrahi by a slight margin of 7,106 votes.
Arundhati Devi’s husband Nitesh Gang Dev is the senior BJP leader and the sitting MP of the Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat. He is related to the royal family of Bamra in Sambalpur district.
Recently, several reports about Gang Deb’s resignation from the BJP came up in the local media based on a post on the BJP leader’s Facebook account. However, he later denied resigning from the BJP and clarified that his Facebook account had been hacked.
Meanwhile, the BJP on Thursday announced names of six candidates for the upcoming assembly elections in Odisha. The party fielded Purnachandra Mohapatra from the Barabati-Cuttack seat, while Sudhanshu Nayak was named party candidate for the Bhandaripokhari seat. The other candidates include Shambhunath Rout (Ghasipura), Ashish Patra (Bhograi), Sudhanshu Nayak (Bhandaripokhari) and Prakash Chandra Ranabijuli (Begunia).
With this the BJP has declared 146 names and it is very likely to declare the name of the remaining lone candidate within a day or two.
