TNI Bureau: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today announced the names of the candidate for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Odisha.
The candidates have been finalised for only 18 seats while candidates for Cuttack, Jajpur and Kandhamal seats have not been announced.
Dharmendra Pradhan has been confirmed for Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat. Aparajita Sarangi has been repeated from Bhubaneswar while Sambit Patra got the nod for Puri again.
What surprised everyone was that party’s national vice president Baijayant Panda has been picked to fight the election from Kendrapara seat. It was speculated that he would not be included in the list of candidates as he is the election in-charge for Uttar Pradesh.
Two other names are also surprising and show that BJP is serious about the Lok Sabha elections and go for the kill in Odisha. Pradeep Panigrahi got the not from Berhampur while Pradeep Purohit will contest from Bargarh. Malabika Deo will contest from Kalahandi Lok Sabha seat.
Sitting MPs Bishweswar Tudu (Mayurbhanj), Suresh Pujari (Bargarh), Nitesh Gangdeb (Sambalpur), Basant Panda (Kalahandi) have been dropped. They might contest the assembly polls.
Check the list here:
1. Bargarh: Pradeep Purohit
2. Sundergarh: Jual Oram
3. Sambalpur: Dharmendra Pradhan
4. Keonjhar: Ananta Nayak
5. Mayurbhanj: Naba Charan Majhi
6. Balasore: Pratap Chandra Sarangi
7. Bhadrak: Avimanyu Sethi
8. Dhenkanal: Rudra Narayan Pany
9. Balangir: Sangeeta Kumar Singh Deo
10. Kalahandi: Malvika Keshari Deo
11. Nabarangpur: Balabhadra Majhi
12. Kendrapara: Baijayant Panda
13. Jagatsinghpur: Bibhu Prasad Tarai
14. Bhubaneswar: Aparajita Sarangi
15. Aska: Anita Subhadarshini
16. Berhampur: Pradeep Kumar Panigrahy
17. Koraput: Kaleram Majhi
18. Puri: Sambit Patra
The names of the candidates were finalised during the Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting in New Delhi yesterday. State President Manmohan Samal, party’s Organisational Secretary Manas Mohanty, Odisha election in-charge Vijayapal Singh Tomar and co-in-charge Lata Usendi attended the meeting that lasted till late night.