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Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president Naveen Patnaik today renominated sitting MLAs to contest from Niali and Patkura assembly constituencies, clearing speculation that the party may field new faces for these seats.
For Patkura seat, the party renamed veteran leader Bed Prakash Agrawal and for Niali, sitting MLA Pramod Mallick has been selected.
With this, BJD, which saw maximum rush of aspirants, among the major parties, for party ticket to contest in the ensuing simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly elections in the state, has completed the process of nominating candidates for all 147 assembly seats and 21 Lok Sabha constituencies.
This was achieved after two weeks of intense brain storming during which hundreds of ticket seekers were seen crowding Naveen Niwas, the residence of chief minister, where Patnaik was closeted with his senior party leaders to finalise the list of candidates, which was announced in seven installments.
The party leadership also shuffled the names of some leaders after the list was announced succumbing to pressure from party workers from their respective constituencies. As a result, veteran leader V Sugnani Kumari Deo, who was excluded from the fist list, was renominated after protests erupted in her home constituency Kabisuryanagar.
Similarly, the second and third lists were revised to include Anang Uday Singhdeo for Bolangir assembly seat and Makdali Kangadi for Biramitrapur constituency. Royal scion Sanjib Pratap Singhdeo was the first choice for Biramitrapur, but his nomination had sparked protests from tribal groups who questioned his caste eligibility for this reserved constituency.
Earlier, several senior leaders of the ruling party had hinted at exclusion of many names which figured in the last election’s candidates’ list and induction of several new faces. It was speculated that those MLAs, who aligned with expelled BJD leader Pyari Mohan Mohapatra when he tried to upstage Patnaik as the chief minister in May, 2012, would be denied tickets this time. However, to the surprise of political pundits many of these MLAs have been renominated.
Sources said, fearing a large scale change in candidates’ list would pave way for emergence of rebel candidates and jeopardize its success ratio, the party changed its poll strategy. In addition to commissioning surveys through independent agencies and gathering information on prospective candidates through internal sources, Patnaik was seen closeted with selected leaders and a handful of present and former bureaucrats and repeatedly consulting with party leaders from different districts to finalise the party ticket. Anticipating large scale changes in BJD list, several Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders had joined the ruling party on the eve of preparation of candidates’ list, inviting anger of local BJD workers.
The Chief Minister’s residence, which had virtually turned into BJD headquarter, also had to deal with protests by several party workers from different parts of the state for denial of tickets to their leaders. Many ticket aspirants were daily making a beeline in front of Naveen Niwas and were seen trying to undermine the chances of other aspirants by distributing memorandum against candidates who were tipped to be front runners for the party ticket.
In the list for 2014 polls, BJD has denied tickets to 35 sitting MLAs and six MPs. Even as BJD vice-president Prafulla Ghadei has been denied ticket, his son has been nominated to fight from Sukinda seat. Similarly, former minister Raghunath Mohanty, who is facing dowry torture charges from her daughter-in-law, has not made it to the list.
The voting for first phase poll in the state, comprising 10 Lok Sabha and 70 assembly seats of western and southern Odisha will be conducted on April 10 while polling for remaining 11 Lok Sabha seats and 77 assembly seats will be done on April 17.
