Bhubaneswar: BJD president and outgoing chief minister of Odisha Naveen Patnaik on Thursday held a review meeting on the party’s poor performance in the elections with the defeated candidates.
According to sources, the BJD’s candidates, who were defeated in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections 2024, attended the meeting at Naveen Niwas in Bhubaneswar. Naveen held a detailed discussion on the party’s performance in the dual elections.
Besides the defeated ministers and MLAs, BJD’s organisation secretary Pranab Prakash Das participated in the meeting. They included Debi Prasad Mishra, Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak, Rohit Pujari, Pritiranjan Ghadei, Bikram Keshari Arukha, Ashok Panda, Gopabandhu Das, Koushalya Pradhan, Srikant Sahu and others.
In the Assembly elections, the BJD could win 51 seats as the BJP bagged 78 seats and the Congress 14 in the 147-member Assembly. With this election, the 24-year rule of Naveen Patnaik-led BJD in the state came to an end.
The defeated Lok Sabha candidates, who were present in the meeting, included Manmath Routray, Pradip Majhi, Ranjita Sahu, Abinash Samal, Sarmistha Sethi, Rajashri Mallik, Manjulata Mandal, Lekhashri Samantsinghar and others. The BJD failed to win a single seat in the Lok Sabha elections as the BJP coming out victorious in 20 out of total 21 constituencies while Congress bagged one seat.
