BJD names candidates for 9 LS, 36 Assembly seats

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Bhubaneswar: A day ahead of filing of nomination papers for the third phase polls, the Biju Janata Dal president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Wednesday announced candidates for nine Lok Sabha and 36 Assembly seats that will go to polls in third and fourth phases.
As announced by the BJD president, the party has re-nominated Rabindra Jena and Pinaki Mishra for Balasore and Puri Lok Sabha seats respectively while actor Anubhav Mohanty has been picked for Kendrapara seat, which was earlier represented by expelled BJD leader and MP Baijayant Panda.
Panda is now in the BJP camp and is tipped to contest from Kendrapara seat.
The BJD has fielded sitting MLA Rajashree Mallick for Jagatsinghpur Lok Sabha segment, Debashis Marandi for Mayurbhanj and Dhamnagar MLA’s wife Manjulata Mandal for Bhadrak seats.
Similarly, former bureaucrats Arup Mohan Patnaik, Nalini Kanta Pradhan and Sarmistha Sethi have been nominated to contest from Bhubaneswar, Sambalpur and Jajpur Parliamentary constituencies respectively.
The party has denied tickets to six sitting MPs. They are: Nagendra Pradhan (Sambalpur), Kulamani Samal (Jagatsingh-pur), Arjun Charan Sethi (Bhadrak), Rita Tarai (Jajpur), Rama Chandra Hansdah (Mayurbhanj) and Prasanna Kumar Patasani (Bhubaneswar). Notably, Hansdah has been suspended from the party following his arrest in connection with a chit fund scam. Naveen has also indicated that his party will send Bhubaneswar MP Prasanna Patasani to Rajya Sabha.
The party has denied tickets to nine sitting MLAs. However, it has fielded the sons of three of these nine MLAs. They are Pravat Tripathy (Banki), Pravat Biswal (Cuttack-Choudwar) and Bijayshree Routray (Basudevpur).
The party has not re-nominated the Banki and Cuttack- Choudwar MLAs because of their complicity in the chit fund scam. They were subsequently arrested and are out on bail.
Similarly, the party has nominated Minister Bijayshree Routray’s son Bishnu Brata for Basudevpur Assembly seat as the minister has already announced his unwillingness to contest elections.
The other sitting legislators, who were denied tickets are: Bedabyasa Nayak (Telkoi), Abhiram Naik (Keonjhar), Saroj Kumar Samal (Dhenkanal) Rabinarayan Mohapatra (Ranpur), Bijay Kumar Nayak (Karanjia) and Hrusikesh Naik (Patna).
As many as six Lok Sabha and 42 Assembly constituencies will go to polls in the third and fourth phases. The polling for the two phases will be held April 23 and 29 respectively.
The ruling party, however, is yet to announce the candidates for three Lok Sabha and 46 Assembly seats.