Naveen's poll ticket reward for party hoppers

Indian Express, April 3, 2009

Bhubaneswar: Ruling BJD gave tickets both for Lok Sabha and assembly elections to those politicians who had recently joined the regional party in Orissa after quitting Congress and BJP.

This was evident from the second list of candidates released by party president Naveen Patnaik in Bhubaneswar on Thursday night.

While Patnaik gave ticket to Pinaki Mishra for Puri Lok Sabha seat, a day after he joined the party, the sitting party MP from the same seat Braja Kishore Tripathy, tendered his resignation and joined BJP.

As BJD's sitting MP from Kendrapara Lok Sabha seat Archana Nayak had earlier quit the party to join BJP, Rajya Sabha MP Baijayanta Panda was nominated from the seat.

In the previous list, BJD had given ticket to Rohit Pujari for Sambalpur Lok Sabha seat, Subhash Naik for Kalahandi seat (both from Congress), Nityananda Pradhan for Aska seat (from CPI) and Hamid Hussain for Baragarh seat (from Koshal Ekta Manch, a frontal body of Koshal Kranti Dal).

While distributing tickets for assembly polls, Naveen took care to reward those who joined BJD recently, mainly after March 11 trust vote held after BJP withdrew its support to the government.

The notable party hoppers who were given assembly tickets were Mahesh Sahu for Talcher, Sanand Marandi for Baripada, Bed Prakash Agarwal for Patkura (all from BJP), Arabinda Dhali for Jaydev seat (from SP) and Nrushinga Sahu for Parajang (from Congress).

The list also dropped some siting MLAs like Sashibusan Behera (Balipatna), Sarat Paikray (Jatni), Saroj Samal (Gandia), Rama Baliar Singh from Puri district and Bikram Keshari Berma from Cuttack district.

The regional party also gave new faces in a few places including Siddharth Singh (Khandapada), Pranab Prakash Das (Jajpur), Priti Ranjan Ghadei (Korei), Ashok Panda (Ekamra-Bhubaneswar), Sarat Chandra Mishra (Bhubaneswar-Central).

Naveen also gave tickets to leaders who were earlier either dropped from the ministry or sidelined in the party.

They were Maheshwar Mohanty for Puri seat, Debasis Nayak for Bari, Damodar Rout for Paradip, Kalani Behera for Cuttack Sadar seat and Bijayshree Routrayu for Basudevpur seat.

These were the ministers dropped while Maheswar Mohanty had to quit the speaker's post in wake of an alleged sexual harassment allegation.