Odisha Elections 2024: Is Anshuman Mohanty Reluctant To Contest From Kendrapada?

Kendrapada: Days after joining the ruling BJD, Anshuman Mohanty is believed to be not keen to contest the Kendrapada Lok Sabha elections against BJP’s Baijayant Panda.

If sources are to be believed, he is interested to become the party’s nominee from Rajnagar Assembly seat.

On Wednesday, BJD president Naveen Patnaik declared Anshuman as the party candidate for Kendrapada parliamentary seat and repeated sitting MLA Dhruba Sahoo from Rajnagar assembly segment.

However, according to his party insiders, Anshuman is dragging his feet to fight for the MP seat and might request party president Naveen Patnaik to reconsider his decision. Speculation is rife that Anshuman, a former Congress MLA from Rajnagar and son of former minister Nalinikanta Mohanty, doesn’t want to lock horns with Baijayant due to certain reasons.

On Wednesday, Anshuman left a huge rally of BJD at Pattamundai midway shortly after the party’s first list of candidates was out, sources said.

Anshuman has inherited political legacy of his father Nalinikant Mohanty, a political stalwart who represented Rajnagar multiple times. Naveen had expelled Nalini from the BJD forcing the latter to join the Congress. Anshuman won from Rajnagar in 2014 on Congress ticket but lost the 2019 election to BJD’s Dhruba Sahoo. He was the Kendrapada District Congress President since 2020 but resigned from the party on February 14 and joined the BJD two days later.

The BJD has announce candidate for 15 of the total 21 Lok Sabha seats. The list includes 3 sitting MPs, 2 sitting MLAs, 1 former MP, 1 former Rajya Sabha member and four new faces. The sitting MPs are Achyuta Samanta from Kandhamal, Sharmistha Sethi from Jajpur and Rajashree Mallick from Jagatsinghpur. Pradeep Majhi, who was MP from 2009 to 2014, will be contesting from Nabarangpur. Two sitting MLAs and political heavyweights, Pranab Prakash Das and Sudam Marandi, are the party candidates from Sambalpur and Mayurbhanj respectively.

Former Rajya Sabha member Dilip Tirkey is the party candidate from Sundargarh, where he had lost to BJP’s Jual Oram in 2014 elections. The new faces include Santrupt Mishra from Cuttack, Manmath Routray from Bhubaneswar, Abinash Samal from Dhenkanal and Ranjita Sahu from Aska.

The party has also fielded two MP candidates who had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 elections. While Koushalya Hikaka has been renominated from Koraput, Arup Patnaik, who lost the Bhubaneswar seat in 2019, will contest from Puri Lok Sabha seat this time.

Lamodhar Nial, who had lost from Khariar Assembly seat in 2019, will contest from Kalahandi.