BHUBANESWAR: Ollywood stars turned BJD leaders Anubhav Mohanty, Siddhanta Mohapatra, Akash Das Nayak and Arindam Ray besides Chief Minister and party supremo Naveen Patnaik find place in the list of 40 star campaigners for the upcoming Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Odisha.
The list of star campaigners was submitted to the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) by the ruling BJD on Saturday. Ollywood star of yesteryears and Rajya Sabha member Prashant Nanda, Muzibullah Khan alias Munna Khan and Kuna Tripathy have also been included in the list.
Other star campaigners of the ruling party include sitting MP from Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha constituency Prasanna Kumar Patsani, Rajya Sabha members Pratap Keshari Deb, Prasanna Acharya and Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, Health and Family Welfare Minister Pratap Jena, former Speaker Kishore Kumar Mohanty, senior leader Naba Kishore Das, BJD vice-president Anang Uday Singhdeo, senior ministers Surya Narayan Patro, Niranjan Pujari, Bikram Keshari Arukha, Prafulla Kumar Mallik, Ramesh Chandra Majhi and Chandra Sarathi Behera.
Members of the youth brigade of the party Sanjay Dasburma and Pranab Prakash Das, former Rajya Sabha member and hockey star Dilip Tirkey and former MP Rabi Narayan Pani have also been named as star campaigners.
Chouhan, 2 others appointed as BJP vice-president
Bhubaneswar: In a bid to placate senior party leader Subash Chouhan, who was denied ticket for the ensuing election, state BJP president Basanta Panda appointed him as vice-president of the party. Panda has also assigned the post of vice-president to Kandhamal MP Pratyusha Rajeswari Singh and party spokesperson Pitambar Acharya. However, in a significant development, state vice-president Raj Kishore Das resigned from the primary membership of the BJP. The reason for Das’s resignation was not immediately known.
‘Disqualify five sitting MLAs from Assembly’
Bhubaneswar: Government chief whip and senior BJD leader Amar Prasad Satpathy on Saturday filed petition before Speaker Pradip Kumar Amat seeking disqualification of membership of five BJD sitting MLAs for voluntarily resigning from the party. The five MLAs are Debraj Mohanty (Aska), Sukant Nayak (Nilgiri), Purnachandra Nayak (Daspalla), Basanti Mallick (Mohana) and Trinath Gamanga (Gunupur). All the five MLAs resigned from BJD after being denied tickets by the party for the upcoming Assembly polls.