Denied Ticket For Odisha Polls, Former Khandapada MLA Anubhav Patnaik Quits BJD

Bhubaneswar: Shortly after BJD declared its candidate for Khandapada Assembly seat, senior leader and former MLA from the constituency Anubhav Patnaik resigned from the primary membership of the party on Thursday.

In a letter to BJD supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Anubhav expressed anguish at being denied a ticket for the Khandapada Assembly seat consecutively for the second time.

He alleged that ignoring party workers who have been dedicatedly and unconditionally working for years to strengthen the party, is injustice.

Anubhav was elected to the Assembly with a BJD ticket from Khandapada in 2014, but in 2019, the party fielded Soumya Ranjan Patnaik from the constituency who won the seat and got 100,038 votes. Patnaik was expelled from the party in September 2023.

BJD declared the name of Bhapur block chairperson Sabitri Pradhan as its candidate from the constituency in the upcoming elections.

He also blamed the senior party for using him in times of need. “An outsider (Soumya Patnaik) was given a ticket in 2019 who never visited the constituency and when the outsider spread nuisance about the party leadership, I had defended the party before the media,” he wrote in his letter.

Anubhav is the son of former legislators Arun Kumar Patnaik and Bijayalaxmi Patnaik. While Arun Patnaik had won from the constituency in 1990 with a Janata Dal ticket, Bijayalaxmi had won twice from the seat in 2000 with BJD tickets and in 2004 as an independent candidate.

The former legislator said his father’s association with Biju Patnaik and his and his mother’s association with BJD since its inception have been disregarded.