Bhubaneswar: Pravati Parida is set to be the first female deputy chief minister of Odisha when she takes oath on Wednesday. She beat BJD leader Dilip Kumar Nayak by 4,588 votes from Nimapara in the recently held elections.
Pravati is a local from Nimapara, from where she contested the assembly elections and emerged victorious. A lawyer by profession, she completed her LLB course from Bhubaneswar’s Utkal University and enrolled as an advocate in the Odisha High Court.
She joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1997 after being a practising lawyer for several years. She, however, left the party and contested as an Independent in 2009 after being denied a ticket from Nimapara. She, however, could garner only 4.52 per cent of the votes and finished fourth after BJD’s Samir Dash, Congreess’ Satyabrata Patra and BJP’s Sankarsan Parida. She returned to the safrron fold and unsuccessfully contested the next two elections in 2014 and 2019 with Dash retaining the seat for BJD.
The equations changed this time as Dash switched sides to BJP after the BJD replaced him with Nayak, who recently joined the regional party after resigning from BJP, from the seat.
Pravati is a first-time MLA from the Nimapara seat. She had served as the women’s wing president of the BJP in Odisha and led the 11-day-long Mahila Suraksha Yatra in 2018 against increaring incidents of crime against women in the state.
In her election affidavit, she declared nine criminal cases pending against her. However, she has not been convicted in any case.
With the announcement of Pravati’s name, the BJP has scripted history as she will be the first woman to sit on the Deputy CM’s chair in Odisha.
