BHUBANESWAR: Days after joining the BJD, former BJP vice-president Lekhasri Samantsinghar was declared the party’s candidate for the Balasore Lok Sabha seat by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here on Thursday.
The chief minister also announced names of the party’s candidates for nine Assembly segments. With this, the BJD has announced candidates for all the 21 LS seats and 117 Assembly seats.
With Lekhasri, the ruling party has now fielded women candidates in seven Lok Sabha seats which constitutes one-third of the total constituencies in the state. Lekhasri is pitted against sitting Balasore MP from BJP and former Union minister Pratap Chandra Sarangi. Besides, she has replaced BJD candidate of 2019 Rabindra Kumar Jena.
In the latest list, three sitting MLAs including senior leader Bhupinder Singh, the party’s legislator from Narla Assembly seat in Kalahandi district, have been dropped. The party has fielded Manorama Mohanty, chairman of the Narla block, in Bhupinder’s place.
The politically significant Paradip seat also witnessed a change in candidate. In place of sitting MLA Sambit Routray, the party has nominated his wife Geetanjali from the seat.
The party has fielded a former Congress MP from Keonjhar Madhav Sardar replacing sitting MLA Premanand Nayak from Telkoi as the latter had quit the party and joined BJP. Sitting MLAs from Laxmipur and Baliguda seats Prabhu Jani and Chandramani Kanhar respectively, have been repeated.
BJD veteran leader and former MP Prasanna Acharya will fight the polls from the Sambalpur Assembly seat. A three-time MP from the Sambalpur LS seat, Acharya is also a three-time MLA from Bargarh and Rairakhol. Sources said BJD’s strategy in fielding Acharya from Sambalpur was to strengthen the position of the party’s organisational secretary Pranab Prakash Das, who is pitted against BJP heavyweight and Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, from the LS seat.
The party has also renominated former minister and sitting Rairakhol MLA Rohit Pujari from the same seat. The fact that the party wants to play safe in the Assembly seats announced on the day was evident from the renomination of Anant Narayan Jena from Bhubaneswar-Central seat. Jena’s renomination was threatened by senior corporator Amaresh Jena who had launched a persistent campaign for the ticket.