BHUBANESWAR: Congress will release its first list of Lok Sabha and Assembly candidates in the first week of April.
Announcing this at a media conference here, party’s campaign committee chairman and former Union minister Bhakta Charan Das said the first list will have names of candidates of around 60 Assembly seats. It will include all the MLAs of the party taking into account their willingness to contest elections and those who had lost in 2019 with lesser margins.
Two senior leaders including the leader of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) Narasingha Mishra and senior MLA Suresh Kumar Routray had announced retirement from electoral politics. Besides, Adhiraj Mohan Panigrahi, who was the Congress MLA from Khariar has resigned and joined BJD. Panigrahi has been named as BJD candidate from Khariar. Das announced that he will contest from Narla Assembly constituency. He was last elected to Odisha Assembly from Bhawanipatna in 1985 as a Janata Party candidate. Das, also a three-time MP from Kalahandi, is likely to contest against senior BJD leader Bhupinder Singh, the sitting MLA from the constituency. Both the BJD and BJP are yet to announce their candidates from Narla.
Stating that Congress performance will improve in Odisha, Das claimed the party will win more than 100 Assembly seats and form government in the state. He alleged that the BJD government has cheated the people of Odisha during the last 24 years. Every section including students, youth, women and farmers were not happy because of the misrule of the BJD government, he stated.