22 New Faces In BJD’s First Candidates List For LS, Assembly Polls

Bhubaneswar: The first list of candidates for nine Lok Sabha and 54 Assembly seats announced by BJD president Naveen Patnaik on Monday for the first and second phase polls has 22 new faces.

Of the 22 new faces, 8 are for the Lok Sabha and 14 for the Assembly polls.

Kalikesh Singh Deo is the only sitting MP, who has been retained.

The eight new Lok Sabha candidates and the leaders they have replaced are mentioned below:

Chandrasekhar Sahu- Berhampur (in place of Sidhant Mohapatra)
Achyut Samant- Kandhamal (in place of Pratyusha Rajeswari Singh, wife of Hemendra Singh)
Pushpendra Singhdeo-Kalahandi (in place of Arka Keshari Singh Deo)
Ramesh Majhi-Nabarangpur (in place of Balabhadra Majhi)
Kaushalya Hikaka-Koraput (in place of her husband Jhina Hikaka)
Pramila Bisoi-Aska (in place of Late Ladu Kishore Swain)
Prasanna Acharya-Bargarh (in place of Pravas Kumar Singh)
Sunita Biswal-Sundargarh (the name of Dilip Tirkey, who lost the poll to BJP leader Jual Oram, was not considered)

Besides, the 14 new candidates for the Assembly polls are as follows:

Raghunath Gamango-Gunupur (in place of Trinath Gamango)
Purna Chandra Baka-Chitrakonda (in place of Dambaru Sisa)
Dusmanta Nayak-Bhawanipatna (in place of Anam Nayak)
Bhupinder Singh-Narla (in place of Dhaneswar Majhi)
Bikram Kumar Panda-Berhampur (in place of Ramesh Chandra Chaupatnaik)
Subash Chandra Behera-Chhatrapur (in place of Dr Priyanshu Pradhan)
Purnabasi Nayak-Mohana (in place of Basanti Mallick)
Manjula Swain-Aska (in place of Debaraj Mohanty)
Latika Pradhan-Kabisuryanagar (in place of V.Sugyan Kumari Deo)
KK Suryamani Baidya-Khallikote (in place of Purna Chandra Sethi)
Chakradhar Kanhar-Baliguda (in place of Rajiv Patra)
Ramesh Behera-Daspalla (in place of Purna Chandra Nayak)
Ajay Das-Kantabanjhi (in place of Ayub Khan)
Naveen Patnaik-Bijepur (in place of Rita Sahu)

Notably, the BJD has given the tickets to five former Congress leaders who recently joined the ruling party.

They are Chandra Sekhar Sahu, Bikram Panda, Jogesh Singh, Naba Kishore Das and Sunita Biswal (daughter of former Chief Minister Hemananda Biswal)