BHUBANESWAR: Chief Minister and BJD supremo on Friday announced the third list of nine candidates for Assembly seats renominating three out of four sitting MLAs including minister of state for Labour and Employees State Insurance Sarada Prasad Nayak. Out of the nine Assembly seats, four were won by BJP and one by Congress in 2019.
One of the major highlights of the third list was nomination of Prakash Chandra Behera from Barabati-Cuttack Assembly seat. Behera who was the president of the Cuttack district BJP had quit the saffron party on March 29, a day after sitting MP Bhatruhari Mahatab joined the party. BJD’s position in Cuttack parliamentary constituency will be strengthened because of candidature of Behera who was the district president of BJP and has good hold at the grassroots, party sources said.
Besides, BJD has renominated sitting MLA from Salipur Prasant Behera, an arch rival of Prakash who fought each other for the last two elections. Besides, the party has also renominated sitting MLA from Balasore Swarup Kumar Das.
After sitting MLA from the Jayadev Assembly seat and former minister Arabinda Dhali quit BJD and has been made the BJP candidate from the seat, the ruling party has fielded Naba Kishor Mallick against him. Mallick had fought the 2019 election from Jayadev seat as an Independent and polled 44,300 votes. As Dhali was not in the scheme of things of the BJD leadership for a long time, Mallick was being promoted as an alternative from the seat.
The party has also nominated Rohit Joseph Tirkey, son of veteran leader George Tirkey from Biramitrapur Assembly seat. Rohit had contested the 2019 election from the same seat on a Congress ticket and had polled 44,137 votes, only around 400 less than those polled by the BJD candidate Makhia Ekka. The seat was won by Shankar Oram of BJP, defeating Ekka by a margin of 16,500 votes.
The party has fielded a new face Sudarsan Haripal from Rengali by changing its 2019 candidate. Haripal is a Zilla Parishad member. Similarly, another new face Meena Majhi has been fielded to take on BJP’s sitting MLA Mohan Majhi from Keonjhar. Raisen Murmu, a former police officer has been fielded from the Rairangpur seat. He had joined BJD four months back.