Bhubaneswar: The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) today announced as many as nine more candidates for the upcoming State assembly election and one nominee for the Lok Sabha election in Odisha.
The nine State assembly seats for which party president and Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik announced candidates are Laxmipur (Prabhu Jani), Paradip (Gitanjali Routray), Sambalpur (Prasanna Acharya), Rairakhol (Rohit Pujari), Telkoi (Madhab Sardar), Talcher (Braja Pradhan), Narla (Manorama Pradhan), Baliguda (Chakramani Kanhar) and Bhubaneswar-Central (Ananta Narayan Jena).
Likewise, Patnaik fielded Lekhasri Samantsinghar from the Balasore Lok Sabha seat. She had joined the conch party recently after quitting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
With Lekhashree, BJD fulfilled its promise of 33 per cent women candidate for Lok Sabha seats. Both CM Naveen Patnaik and BJD’s main election strategist VK Pandian had made the promise to field 33 per cent women candidate for Lok Sabha seats.
Apart from the other six women candidates whom the conch party has fielded for the Lok Sabha election are Rajashree Mallick from Jagatsinghpur, Sarmistha Sethi from Jajpur, Kaushalya Hikaka from Koraput, Parineeta Mishra from Bargarh, Manjulata Mandal from Bhadrak and Ranjita Sahu from Aska.
For Balasore Lok Sabha seat, it will be now Lekhasri Samantsinghar versus senior BJP leader Pratap Chandra Sarangi. It is like Nilagiri son vs Nilagiri daughter-in-law.
Sarangi had won the Balasore Lok Sabha seat by defeating BJD’s Rabindra Jena with a margin of 12,956 votes in 2019. Jena had beaten Sarangi in the 2014. Now, only time will say whether Lekhashree stop him from winning a second consecutive term as Balasore MP.
