Bhubaneswar: Speculation is rife that the ruling BJD will field Soumya Ranjan Patnaik from the Cuttack Lok Sabha seat, one the party has been winning for the last six consecutive elections. Bhartruhari Mahtab has been the party MP from the seat since 1998, while former Chief Minister Biju Patnaik held it in 1996.
The BJD has been scouting for new faces to tide over anti-incumbency, having been in power for the last four terms. Barring one, all candidates for the Lok Sabha seats announced so far have been replaced.
Sources in the BJD said Soumya Ranjan had been lobbying hard for the Khandapada Assembly seat despite two consecutive defeats. He fought from the seat as Congress nominee in 2009 and lost to the BJD’s Siddharth Sekhar Singh. After being sacked from the grand old party in 2013, he launched his own party, Aam Odisha, and again contested from the seat in 2014 but lost to rival BJD candidate Anubhav Patnaik by a slender margin of about 600 votes.
Khandapada Assembly segment falls under the Cuttack Lok Sabha seat.
Earlier on Monday, the BJP fielded former DGP Prakash Mishra, who joined it on Sunday, from the Cuttack seat.
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