The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has fielded 33 per cent women candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in the state.
The nomination process for the 21 parliamentary seats concluded on Thursday with BJD chief and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik announcing Lekhasri Samantsinghar as the party’s candidate for Balasore Lok Sabha seat. Previously, Patnaik had named six other women as nominees for the LS polls.
In 2019, five out of the seven women candidates Patnaik had fielded had won.
This time around, Patnaik made changes to the roster by dropping two sitting women MPs, Chandrani Murmu from Keonjhar and Pramila Bisoi from Aska, while opting to re-nominate Kausalya Hikaka for Koraput Lok Sabha seat.
The seven women candidates are - Lekhasri Samantsinghar (Balasore), Sarmistha Sethi (Jajpur), Manjula Mandal (Bhadrak), Rajashree Mallik (Jagatsinghour), Parineeta Mishra (Bargarh), Kausalya Hikaka (Koraput) and Ranjita Sahu (Aska).
Patnaik’s Lok Sabha candidates also include eight turncoats (38 per cent). They are Lekhasri Samantsinghar (Balasore), Bhrugu Baxipatra (Berhampur), Pradeep Majhi (Nabarangpur), Surendra Singh Bhoi (Bolangir), Parineeta Mishra (Baragarh), Dhanarjay Sidu (Keonjhar), Ansuman Mohanty (Kendrapara) and Manmoth Routray (Bhubaneswar).
Samantasinghar had recently switched allegiance from the BJP’s Odisha unit. Notably, she is the second former BJP vice-president, following Bhrugu Baxipatra, to receive BJD’s nomination for the Lok Sabha elections. She will contest against BJP’s sitting MP and former Union Minister Pratap Jena.
Out of the nine assembly candidates announced on Thursday, two sitting MLAs - Sambit Routray (Paradip) and Bhupinder Singh (Narla) - have been denied re-nomination.
Madhab Sardar, who was defeated in Keonjhar assembly seat in 2019 elections, will replace Premenada Nayak in Telkoi. Nayak had earlier resigned from the BJD and joined the BJP and got nomination from the saffron party.
Prasanna Acharya, the party’s senior vice-president, has been nominated as the candidate for Sambalpur assembly seat.
He will take on leader of opposition Jaynarayan Mishra of the BJP.
