Bhubaneswar: Congress has named Jay Narayan Patnaik as its candidate for Puri Lok Sabha seat in Odisha after Sucharita Mohanty pulled out of the race on Saturday, citing lack of funds for her campaign.
A statement issued by Congress general secretary K C Venugopal said that party president Mallikarjun Kharge has approved the candidature of Patnaik in place of Mohanty.
Sucharita Mohanty, the daughter of former Congress MP Brajamohan Mohanty, in a mail to Venugopal claimed that her campaign was hit hard because the party denied her funding.
Mohanty, who quit journalism to join politics in 2014, alleged that the party’s Odisha in-charge had asked her to fend for herself.
Mohanty said she had set a good precedent by returning her ticket so that the party could field someone financially better placed to take on the BJP and the BJD in Puri.
She said as in 2014, there was a groundswell of popular support for the Congress in Puri, but “fund crunch was holding the party back from a winning campaign”.
“I regret that without party funding, I won’t be able to carry out the campaign in Puri. I, therefore, return the Congress ticket,” she said.
Mohanty said her BJP and BJD opponents were both “money bags and were running vulgar campaigns centred on the show of wealth rather than the show of strength”.
However, Congress in-charge for Odisha Ajoy Kumar dismissed the allegation made by Mohanty and said there was no truth in lack of funds for her campaign. In fact, the party had already decided to replace its candidate for Puri Lok Sabha seat, he said.
