Bhubaneswar: Former Tirtol MLA Bijay Shankar Das tied the knot with his girlfriend, Pratyusha Nanda, in an intimate, low-key ceremony in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday.
The wedding took place at a hotel near Kalpana Square in the capital city, followed by a reception on the same day. The event was strictly a family affair, attended by relatives and a highly restricted list of guests.
According to sources, top-tier leaders from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) were noticeably absent. Attendees primarily comprised a small handful of regional leaders who were close associates of Bijay Shankar’s late father, the influential BJD leader and former minister Bishnu Das. Representatives from the Biridi and Raghunathpur blocks made appearances, but no major political heavyweights from his former home constituency of Tirtol attended the celebrations.
A Trail of Romantic and Legal Controversies
The private, quiet nature of the wedding stands in stark contrast to the massive political and legal storm that engulfed the young politician over the last few years.
In 2022, Bijay Shankar found himself at the epicenter of a high-profile scandal involving another woman, Somalika Dash from the Deuligrameswar area of Jagatsinghpur. Somalika had accused the legislator of cheating, sexual harassment, and breaching a formal promise of marriage. They reportedly knew each other while studying at SVM college and fell in love. She also made public their personal video during the panchayat polls.
The controversy peaked in June 2022 when the duo agreed to marry with the help of mediators, had formally applied for a court marriage at the Jagatsinghpur Sub-Registrar’s office. On the designated day, Somalika and her family waited at the registry office for hours, but Bijay Shankar failed to turn up, later claiming he was caught up in constituency work and his mother’s failing health.
The incident led to police complaints, protests by opposition parties, and a lengthy legal tussle. Even when Bijay Shankar later sought to move forward with a marriage application to Pratyusha in Cuttack, Somalika moved the High Court and filed official objections with the marriage registrar, keeping the legislator under continuous public and judicial scrutiny.
The Political Fallout
Political analysts directly link these persistent controversies to the stalling of Bijay Shankar’s nascent political career. He had entered electoral politics on a wave of sympathy following the demise of his father, Bishnu Das, who won the Tirtol Assembly seat in 2019 but passed away from COVID-19 in 2020. Bijay Shankar subsequently won the following by-election, securing the seat for the BJD. However, given the heavy media trial and public backlash surrounding his personal life, the BJD leadership opted to drop him, denying him a ticket to contest the 2024 Assembly elections from Tirtol.
