BHUBANESWAR: Congress on Sunday changed candidates for five Assembly seats and announced its nominee for Nilagiri Assembly seat for the ensuing elections in Odisha. Besides, the party has fielded Jay Narayan Patnaik as candidate for Puri Lok Sabha seat after Sucharita Mohanty pulled out from the race citing funds crunch.
The party has fielded former minister Debasis Nayak from the Bari Assembly seat in place of Arati Deo. Nayak, a former minister and four-time MLA from Bari, quit BJP and joined Congress on Saturday after the saffron party did not field him from the seat. Nayak had joined BJP after resigning from BJD two months back.
The party also changed candidate for the prestigious Puri Assembly segment by replacing Sujit Kumar Mohapatra with former MLA Uma Ballav Rath. The decision has sparked large-scale resentment among the supporters of Mohapatra who ransacked the office of the party at Puri.
According to a release issued by the All India Congress Committee (AICC), the party has nominated Akshaya Acharya as its candidate from Nilagiri Assembly constituency in Balasore district. Acharya is a senior Congress leader who had won from the seat in the 1995 election.
Besides, the party has replaced Debi Prasanna Chand, a former MLA from Jaleswar with Sudarsan Das for the Assembly segment. Das had contested from the seat on a Congress ticket and had finished third behind minister of state for Excise Aswini Kumar Patra. BJP candidate Jaynarayan Mohanty had finished second.
Similarly, the party has fielded Himanshu Chaulia in place of Bijayananda Chaulia from Athamallik seat in Dhenkanal. Sudarshan Sahoo has been nominated for the Athagarh Assembly seat in place of Maheboob Ahemad Khan. With this the party has announced candidates for 20 Lok Sabha and 143 Assembly seats.