May 3rd 2024.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has just released its final list of candidates for the upcoming Assembly elections in Odisha. This comes after the party had already announced the names of candidates for 146 out of 147 Assembly seats. With this latest declaration, the party has filled in the remaining spot for the Nilgiri Assembly seat.
In an interesting turn of events, BJP has chosen former Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leader Santosh Khatua as their nominee for the Nilgiri constituency. Khatua had recently resigned from BJD, and the ruling party had nominated ex-BJP leader and sitting MLA Sukanta Kumar Nayak for the same seat. This move by the BJD had prompted Khatua to leave the party and join BJP. In the previous Assembly elections of 2019, Khatua had contested from the Nilgiri seat as a BJD candidate, but he narrowly lost to BJP's Nayak by a margin of only 1,577 votes.
Both the ruling BJD and the main opposition BJP have now announced their candidates for all 21 Lok Sabha and 147 Assembly constituencies in Odisha. It is worth noting that the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections will be held simultaneously in the state, spanning four phases from May 13 to June 1. The results for both the parliamentary and state polls will be announced on June 4.
This final list of candidates announced by BJP marks the completion of their preparations for the upcoming elections. With all the candidates in place, the party is now gearing up for a tough battle against the BJD in Odisha. It will be interesting to see how the voters respond to the new candidate choices and if they will bring about a change in the political landscape of the state.
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