BHUBANESWAR: Hectic parleys continued in the BJD camp at Naveen Niwas on Friday to give final touches to selection of candidates for the six remaining Lok Sabha and 75 Assembly seats.
Sources said the announcement of candidates is likely to be deferred as there is no clarity yet on the Lok Sabha seats for the remaining six seats. Besides, the party will also wait till BJP announces its first list of candidates for the Assembly seats. The chief minister, however, convened a meeting of the senior leaders to discuss probable candidates for Lok Sabha seats.
Meanwhile, former minister Surendra Singh Bhoi who quit Congress on Thursday joined BJD on the day giving rise to speculation that he is likely to be fielded from Balangir Lok Sabha seat. The Congress leader had won from Titilagarh Assembly seat in 2004 and had lost to Water Resources Minister Tukuni Sahu in 2014 and 2019 elections. As Sahu has already been announced as the party’s candidate from the Titilagarh Assembly seat this time, it is speculated that Bhoi is likely to be fielded from Balangir Lok Sabha seat.
Bhoi told mediapersons he joined BJD as he was inspired by the people-oriented policies of state government, transparent governance and clean image of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. He said he is prepared to take up any work assigned by the party leadership for achieving the chief minister’s dream of a new Odisha. Besides, hundreds of BJP elected representatives and workers from Angul and Dhenkanal districts joined BJD accompanied by party’s Lok Sabha candidate for Dhenkanal seat Abinash Samal and other senior leaders.