For the second successive time since he made his political debut in the late nineties, Odisha Chief Minister and BJD supremo Naveen Patnaik on Monday announced that he will contest from two assembly seats in the upcoming Assembly polls.

BJD supremo Patnaik will contest from Kantabanji assembly constituency in Bolangir district of Western Odisha along with his traditional Hinjili seat in Ganjam district of southern Odisha.

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Patnaik, who released the 5th list of nine candidates for the Assembly elections in the state, announced his candidature for Kantabanji assembly seat.

Five-time Chief Minister Patnaik had also fought from two seats in 2019 Assembly polls. He won from both Hinjili and Bijepur assembly segments in Bargarh district of western Odisha. However, Patnaik later resigned from Bijepur and retained the Hinjili seat. Later BJD won the Bijepur seat in a by-election.

Patnaik has been on a winning streak from the Hinjili seat since 2000. However he opted to contest again from a seat in Western Odisha to consolidate the party’s vote base in western parts of the State. Incidentally, BJP has a strong base in western part in comparison to coastal Odisha. Santosh Singh Saluja of Congress had won the seat by defeating the BJD nominee in 2019 Assembly polls.

The nine BJD candidates announced by Patnaik included six women and four deserters from rival parties. The party has dropped four sitting MLAs – Purna Chandra Baka (Chitrakonda), Kishore Chandra Naik (Kuchinda), Rajnikant Singh (Angul) and Samir Ranjan Dash (Nimapara).

With the latest candidacy announcement, the BJD has so far announced the names of 126 candidates out of the total 147 assembly segments and named contestants for all the 21 Lok Sabha seats.