Chiranjeeb, Sukant join BJD but no clarity on their seats yet
Bhubaneswar: BJD is yet to announce its second list of Lok Sabha and Assembly candidates, but sitting Nilgiris MLA Sukanta Nayak and former state Congress working president Chiranjeeb Biswal joined the regional party here on Sunday.
Although the induction of the two leaders will strengthen BJD’s position in Balasore and Jagatsinghpur districts, it is not clear from which Lok Sabha and Assembly seats they will be nominated or whether they will be asked to work for the party. BJD has not yet decided its Lok Sabha candidate from Balasore.
The leadership, sources said, wants Nayak to contest from the seat against sitting MP Pratap Chandra Sarangi, who has been re-nominated by the saffron party.
However, Nayak is reportedly not interested in contesting the Lok Sabha elections and instead wants to contest from the Nilgiri Assembly seat. Describing his return to BJD as a homecoming, Nayak said he is ready to work in whatever capacity the party supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and the state leadership want. After joining BJD, he met Chief Minister and 5T President VK Pandian.
Sources said that Biswal will also be given a place on an assembly seat in Jagsinghpur. A former working president of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC), Biswal was elected to the assembly from Tirtol in 2004 and from Jagatsinghpur in 2014.
Biswal cannot be fielded from Tirtol, which is now a seat reserved for SCs, and Jagatsinghpur, which is represented by Prashant Kumar Muduli, who is also the government chief whip. However, sources say Muduli is likely to be transferred to Erasama-Balykuda, the constituency he represented twice in 2009 and 2014. The constituency’s sitting MLA Raghunandan Das, who was the Minister of State for Water Resources, was dropped from the cabinet. In June, 2022. In such a situation, Biswal can be fielded from Jagatsinghpur. After joining BJD, he also met the Chief Minister and 5T Chairman at Naveen Niwas.
Meanwhile, former Kuchinda MLA Brundaban Majhi also returned to BJD. Majhi, a prominent tribal leader, had won from Kuchinda on a Janata Dal ticket in 1990. However, he contested the 2004 assembly elections as a BJP candidate from Likera and defeated his Congress rival and former Chief Minister Hemanand Biswal by a narrow margin. 1,344 votes. On 13 March 2009, he again switched allegiance to BJD and was offered a ticket to contest from Kuchinda Assembly seat, but he finished third behind Congress and BJP candidates. After not getting the ticket, Majhi left BJD again before the 2019 assembly elections.
