Congress Picks Panchanan Kanungo For Cuttack LS Seat, JB’s Son For Begunia

New Delhi/Bhubaneswar: The Central Election Committee (CEC) of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in a late night release on Tuesday announced candidates for two more Lok Sabha and nine Assembly seats in Odisha.

According to the release, Manas Jena will contest from Jajpur (SC) Lok Sabha seat while former BJD leader and Finance minister Panchanan Kanungo will take on BJP candidate Prakash Mishra and BJD’s Bhartruhari Mahtab in Cuttack (General) Lok Sabha seat.

Mentioned below are the candidates for 9 Assembly seats:

1. Manas Das Patnaik-Balasore
2. Smrutirekha Pahi-Dharmasala
3. Santosh Kumar Nanda-Jajpur
4. Trinath Behera-Hindol (SC)
5. Bhabani Shankar Mohapatra-Kamakhyanagar
6. Bobby Mohanty-Badamba
7. Arindam (BAPI) Sarkel-Paradeep
8. Yudhistir Samantray-Pipili
9. Prithvi Ballav Patnaik-Begunia

In the two Lok Sabha seats announced by the party, Congress has replaced two candidates who had contested the 2014 elections. They are Ashok Das (replaced by Manas Jena) and Aparajita Mohanty (replaced by Panchanan Kanungo).

Of nine Assembly seats, five candidates have been replaced. They are Arun Dey (replaced by Manas Das Patnaik), Srinath Mishra (replaced by Smrutirekha Pahi), Namita Nayak (replaced by Trinath Behera), Laxmi Devi (replaced by Bobby Mohanty) and Debasis Patnaik (replaced by Prithvi Ballav Patnaik).

On the other hand, the party has retained Santosh Kumar Nanda, Bhabani Shankar Mohapatra, Arindam (Bapi) Sarkhel and Yudhistir Samantray.

With this, Congress has so far announced candidates for 17 of 21 Lok Sabha seats and 123 of 147 Assembly seats.