While Naveen Patnaik along with 20 MLAs of Biju Janata Dal took oath on Wednesday, tribal dominated Sundargarh district went unrepresented. Although two BJD MLA candidates like Sharada Prasad Nayak and Subrat Tarai were elected from Rourkela and Raghunathpalli, respectively, none of them got a berth in the ministry, that took oath on Wednesday.

Significantly, Sundargarh is one district, which did not have any representation

in the State cabinet, even in Naveen Patnaik’s fourth tenure (2014-19).

As far as performance of Biju Janata Dal is concerned, Sundargarh has not been a BJD bastion, from the result viewpoint. While the BJD has been sweeping polls with bagging all seven seats of the district, Sundargarh has been bagging maximum two seats.

During 2014 elections, BJD had bagged two seats (Raghunathpalli and Rajgangpur) in 2009 also BJD had bagged two seats (Rourkela and Raghunathpalli) only.

Notably, Sundargarh had representation in Naveen’s third tenure (2009-14), as Rourkela MLA Sharada Nayak had become a Minister.

Nayak, however, had an unceremonious exit from the Cabinet following his alleged involvement in coup attempt against the Naveen Government at the behest of Pyarimohan Mohapatra.

After Nayak’s exit, Raghunathaplli MLA Subrat Tarai was inducted in the Ministry and had continued till the 2014 elections.

Political observers feel the internal bickering among the BJD rank and file Sundargarh and also poor performance in the Lok Sabha constituency may be the reason of the

non-inclusion of anyone in the Ministry.

Nayak secured 60,877 votes against BJD MP candidate Sunita Biswal’s 36,781 votes in the Rourkela Assembly segment and Subrat Tarai secured 44,815 votes against 33,232 votes by Biswal in the Raghunathpalli segment.