Patnaik in fray from 2 Assembly seats
■ BJD drops 3 MLAs ■ Royal women, leaders’ wives in poll list
Two queens, a princess and wives of a couple of top leaders of Odisha’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) on Wednesday made their cut into the fifth phase list of the party’s Assembly candidates.
The regional party fielded Bamanda queen Arundhati Devi from the Deogarh seat, while Sanjukta Singh, wife of Odisha Assembly’s deputy speaker Rajanikant Singh was nominated to fight from Angul.
Rajanikant is scion of Angul royal family. Sulakshana Geetanjali Devi, the princess of Dharakote, was declared the candidate for SanaKhemundi in Ganjam district.
Apart from giving ticket to the deputy speaker’s wife, the BJD gave ticket to Indira Nanda, wife of party’s senior leader and former minister Rabi Nanda, for the Jeypore seat.
The fifth phase list also included the name of chief minister Naveen Patnaik as the candidate for the Kantabanji seat. This is the second Assembly segment the CM will be contesting.
In the first list, the CM’s name figured as the candidate for the Hinjili Assembly constituency in Ganjam district.
In 2019, Naveen had also contested from two seats — Hinjli and Bijepur in Baragarh district. He retained the Hinjli seat and resigned from Bijepur.
Mr Naveen’s name found place in the fifth list of nine candidates for the Assembly elections in Odisha.
The party dropped three sitting MLAs — Samir Ranjan Singh of Nimapara, Kishore Chandra Naik of Kuchinda and Purnachandra Baka of Chitrakonda.
The party has swapped candidates in two Assembly segments – Samablpur and Rairakhol. Prasanna Acharya, who was earlier declared to contest from Sambalpur, will now fight from Rairakhol. Similarly, Rohit Pujari, who was fielded from Rairakhol, was shifted to Sambalpur.
◗ RAJANIKANT IS scion of Angul royal family. Sulakshana Geetanjali Devi, the princess of Dharakote, was declared the candidate for SanaKhemundi in Ganjam district. The BJD gave ticket to Indira Nanda, wife of former minister Rabi Nanda, for Jeypore seat.