Odisha Election 2024: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Odisha unit vice president Bhrigu Baxipatra and Cuttack district president Prakash Behera resigned from the party on Wednesday ahead of the Lok Sabha and Odisha Assembly elections and joined the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD). Bakshipatra resigned from the party during the day. At the same time, Behera had broken ties with BJP on March 29.
There is speculation that BJD may field Bakshipatra from Baharampur Lok Sabha seat and Behera from Salepur. Both the leaders had contested the 2019 elections as BJP candidates, but had to face defeat. Bakshipatra took membership of BJD at Shankh Bhawan, the party headquarters in Bhubaneswar. BJD MP from Baharampur Chandrashekhar Sahu welcomed Bakshipatra into the party.
Bakshipatra resigned from the party after BJP fielded party MLA Pradeep Panigrahi from Baharampur seat. Meanwhile, BJD has appointed sitting MP Sahu as the party’s vice-president and chairman of the manifesto committee.
BJD has announced names for 15 Lok Sabha seats.
The party has not yet announced the other members of the committee, which will prepare the manifesto for simultaneous elections to the 147-member assembly and 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state. BJD has so far released the list of candidates for 15 out of 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
last Lok Sabha Elections Bakshipatra had secured 3.49 lakh votes, but Sahu defeated him by a margin of about 94,000 votes.
Former Salepur MLA Prakash Behera joins BJD
Former Salepur MLA Prakash Behera also joined BJD. He took membership of BJD in the presence of senior party leader Manas Mangaraj. Behera had won the Salepur seat on Congress ticket in 2014 but before the 2019 elections, he joined BJP and then contested from the same constituency but was defeated by BJD’s Prashant Behera.
Similarly, Rohit Joseph Tirkey, son of prominent tribal leader George Tirkey, also joined BJD. He had contested the 2019 elections from Birmitrapur assembly constituency in Sundargarh district on a Congress ticket, but he lost.
BJD fields candidates on 72 assembly seats
BJD has released the list of candidates for 72 out of 147 assembly seats, but the party has not yet announced candidates for Birmitrapur and Salepur. Rohit’s father has been a four-time MLA from Birmitrapur and was in BJD from 2002 to 2006. George had won from Birmitrapur seat for the first time in 1995 and again in 2000 on Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) ticket.
After resigning from BJD, he won the elections from Birmitrapur as an independent candidate in 2009. After this, he founded his political party Samata Kranti Dal in 2014 and won from Birmitrapur for the fourth time. Both father and son had lost from Sundergarh Lok Sabha seat and Biramitrapur Assembly seat respectively in 2019.