BHUBANESWAR: Congress on Sunday announced candidates for nine more Assembly seats including that of president of OPCC Niranjan Patnaik who has been fielded from Bhandaripokhari constituency in Bhadrak district.
This will be the second seat from where Patnaik will contest in the Assembly elections apart from Ghasipura in Keonjhar district.
Patnaik has already filed his nomination papers from Ghasipura seat. The OPCC chief will take on BJD leader and senior minister Badri Narayan Patra at Ghasipura and Prafulla Samal, also a minister, in Bhandaripokhari.
The party has also fielded Nalinikanta Mohanty from Bhadrak, Sitakanta Mohapatra from Barchana, Rabindranath Kar from Salepur, Bibhranshu Sekhar Lenka from Mahakalapada, Lalatendu Mohapatra from Balikuda-Ersama and Satyabrata Patra from Nimapara.
In the new list, the party has replaced two of its candidates with new faces. Debi Prasad Mallick has been fielded in place of Bibhu Prasad Tarai for Tirtol Assembly seat while Smruti Rekha Pahi was replaced with Kisan Panda from Dharmasala. Tarai, who was announced as party candidate from Tirtol, joined BJP on Saturday.
With this, the Congress has announced its candidates for all 136 Assembly seats it is contesting in the ensuing elections. As part of seat adjustments with like-minded parties, Congress has left five Assembly segments for the JMM and three each for the CPI and the CPI(M).
Similarly, Congress has left three of the 21 Lok Sabha seats, one each for the JMM, the CPI and the CPI(M), and has declared 18 candidates for the Parliamentary seats.