TNI Bureau: Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president Naveen Patnaik today announced seventh list of candidates for the upcoming 2024 assembly elections.

Patnaik announced the names of candidates for six more Assembly seats. They are Hindol (Mahesh Sahoo), Raghunathpalli (Archana Rekha Behera), Balikuda-Ersama (Sharada Prasanna Jena), Kakatpur (Tusharkanti Behera), Bangiriposhi (Ranjita Marandi) and Bari (Biswaranjan Mallick).

With today’s announcement, the State ruling party has announced candidates for 141 seats out of the total 147 Assembly constituencies in Odisha. It is yet to name candidates in other six assembly segments.

The six assembly seats where BJD is yet to announce candidates are Khandapada, Khordha, Begunia, Korei, Bhogarai and Nilagiri.

Out of the six, BJD has MLA in the first five assembly seats while BJP’s Nilagiri MLA Sukanta Nayak has also joined the conch party recently.

Soumya Ranjan Patnaik is the sitting MLA of Khandapada Assembly seat while Jyotindra Nath Mitra is the present Khordha MLA. Likewise, Rajendra Kumar Sahoo is the Begunia MLA, Ashok Kumar Bal is MLA of Korei and Ananta Das is the legislator from Bhogarai.

The delay of the announcement of candidates in these assembly segments shows that BJD is finding it very hard to finalize the candidates for these seats. However, as the filing of nomination papers for the first phase election in the State has already started, it is expected that the rulling party would soon finalise candidates for these six seats.