Bhubaneswar: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday released the names of candidates for 112 of the total 147 Assembly seats in Odisha in the first phase.
The party had already released the names of candidates for all 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state in two phases in the past.
The ruling BJD had already released the names of candidates for 15 Lok Sabha seats and 72 Assembly seats, while the Opposition Congress has yet to announce the candidates for both the Lok Sabha and Assembly seats.
The BJP has re nominated most of its sitting MLAs in the first phase and fielded some BJD leaders who had recently quit the party and joined the BJP.
BJP state’s unit President Manmohan Samal will contest from the Chandbali Assembly seat instead of Dhamnagar, where he was elected to the state assembly in the 2004 Assembly elections, while former BJD MP and actor turned politician Sidhant Mohapatra has been nominated by the party to contest the Digapahandi Assembly seat.
Similarly, former BJD MLA Priyadarshi Mishra, who also recently quit the BJD and joined the BJP, has been fielded for Bhubaneswar (North), from where he was elected to the Assembly on a BJD ticket in the 2014 Assembly elections.
Party’s sitting MP from Bargarh Suresh Pujari, who was dropped this time for the Lok Sabha seat, has been fielded from Brajrajnagar Assembly seat.
The ruling BJD’s sitting MLA Arabinda Dhali, who had resigned from the party and joined the BJP, will be allowed to contest the Jayadev (SC) seat, which he had held as a BJD candidate in the 2019 Assembly elections.
The BJP’s sitting MLA from the Malkangiri (ST) seat has been dropped, and in his place, the party has fielded Narasingha Madkami. The party also dropped sitting Brahmagiri MLA Lalitendu Mohapatra and, in his place, fielded his niece Upasana Mohapatra, daughter of late Congress leader Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra, who was elected to the state assembly three times from the Brahmagiri Assembly seat.
Among the sitting MLAs who were re nominated by the party in the first phase are Bhabani Shankar Bhoi(Talsara),Kusum Tete( Sundargarh),Shankar Oram (Biramitrapur),Nauri Nayak (Rengali), Jayanarayan Mishra(Sambalpur),Subash Chandra Panigrahi ( Deogarh),Mohan Charan Majhi (Keonjhar),Ganesh ram Singh Khuntia(Jashipur), Suryabanshi Suraj (Bhadrak),Nityananda Gond(Umerkota),Jayant Kumar Sarangi ( Puri).
