Odisha unit BJP president Manmohan Samal has been nominated from Chandabali assembly seat while the former party president Suresh Pujari, a sitting MP, will contest from Brarajarajnagar.
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The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday declared the first list of candidates for upcoming Assembly polls in the State with the list of 112 candidates containing a mixture of old and new faces besides the turncoats who switched sides to join the party ahead of the polls.
Odisha unit BJP president Manmohan Samal has been nominated from Chandabali assembly seat while the former party president Suresh Pujari, a sitting MP, will contest from Brarajarajnagar.
While the party has retained a majority of 23 sitting MLAs, the party has opted to re-nominate a sizable number of old faces who contested 2019 Assembly polls.
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Former MLAs Akash Das Nayak and Priyadarshi Mishra have been given the party tickets. Former MP Sidhant Mohapatra has also been nominated to fight Assembly polls. All of them had resigned from BJD to join BJP in the recent past.
Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the coastal State will be held simultaneously in four phases on May 13, 20, 25 and June 1. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) with 12 seats bagged the maximum number of seats, followed by the BJP (8) and the Congress (1).
In the last assembly election, held simultaneously with the general election in 2019, the BJD had recorded thumping electoral success winning 113 of the 147 seats. The BJP stood at distant second with 23 seats, followed by the Congress with 9. The CPM won one seat and another was secured by an Independent.
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