BJD president and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today announced the names of Prasanna Acharya, Bishnu Das and Bhaskar Rao as party candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections slated for June 11.
"Three senior leaders who have been made party candidates are Prasanna Acharya, Bishnu Das and Bhaskar Rao," Patnaik said here.
Among 50 aspirants, he selected candidates from all the three regions of the state.
Prasanna Acharya, former Lok Sabha member and ex-minister, represents the western region of the state, while N Bhaskar Rao hails from the southern belt.
Bishnu Das, a former state minister, comes from the coastal region and belongs to the scheduled caste community.
Both Acharya and Rao are party vice-presidents, while Das is BJD's Jagatsinghpur district president. Rao happens to be the deputy chairman of the state Planning Board.
Acharya and Das had lost the 2014 Assembly polls.
Announcement of BJD candidates is significant as all the three vacant Rajya Sabha seats are likely to go in favour of the ruling party.
Opposition Congress and BJP lack the numbers to get even one candidate elected to the Upper House of Parliament.
While BJD has 117 MLAs in the 147-member Odisha Assembly, Congress has 16 members followed by BJP with 10 MLAs.
As each candidate requires first preference vote of at least 37 members, neither Congress nor BJP has the required numbers.
The three Rajya Sabha seats of Odisha would fall vacant as the tenure of Pyarimohan Mohapatra, Baishnab Charan Parida and Bhupinder Singh ends on July 1.
