The distribution of tickets is the source of BJD’s troubles

Ahead of the elections, Odisha has become a political hotbed. However, the governing BJD suffered yet another blow on Thursday when former deputy speaker Ram Chandra Panda and sitting MLA from Athamallik, Ramesh Chandra Sai, left the regional party.

Former Works secretary Nalini Kanta Pradhan took over for Sai, who had won the constituency’s 2019 election by a margin of more than 47,000 votes. Pradhan has run unsuccessfully from Sambalpur in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Sai claimed he has served the party for the previous five years and wishes to leave on a personal basis in his resignation letter to party president and chief minister Naveen Patnaik. After Parshuram Dhada of Soro withdrew from the party after the announcement of the second round of candidates by the regional organization, Sai is the second serving MLA.

Panda resigned from the BJD the day after Bhrugu Baxipatra, a former vice president of the BJP, was awarded a ticket for the Berhampur Lok Sabha constituency, only hours after he left the saffron party. Panda took aim at the BJD leadership on the matter, expressing that it was quite unsettling that Baxipatra received a ticket in this fashion.

Panda left the BJP in 2017 and joined the BJD. The former deputy speaker said that while the party had promised to field him for the Berhampur Lok Sabha seat, it did not even confer with him before to Baxipatra’s induction and nomination.

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Panda claimed he had tried for the previous fifteen days to meet with the chief minister but had been unsuccessful in his resignation letter to the party supremo. Panda said that despite carrying out all of the duties assigned to him by the leadership, he received no respect. He was, however, recently disregarded from any party organizational activities. He said that the party is currently under the hands of leaders who left the Congress.

In addition to Panda, T Gopi, a prominent BJD leader, also left the party due to his displeasure with the way tickets were distributed. In a same vein, Asit Patnaik, the 15-year-old son of five-time Bhadrak MLA Jugal Kishore Patnaik, has resigned from the BJD’s main membership as of Thursday. Patnaik was trying to get a ticket from the seat in the Bhadrak Assembly.

“I have even given up on my political goals in order to further BJD’s interests and expansion. The party disregarded me and nominated a new candidate for the Bhadrak Assembly seat in the 2019 elections. As a devoted BJD member, I did not express my disapproval, even though it was an unfair move given that my father was the current MLA of Bhadrak,” he wrote to the BJD president.

Asit, a former chairman of the Odisha Pisciculture Development Corporation Limited, said he will carry on serving the Bhadrak community. Jugal Patnaik became victorious from Bhadrak on a BJD ticket in 2009 and 2014, after his resignation from Congress. But in 2019, the party has brought Sanjib Kumar Mallick in his stead. Prafulla Samal, a former minister, has been nominated by the party for the position. The announcement of nominations for the Assembly seats in Jagatsinghpur, Phulbani, Ekamra-Bhubaneswar, and other areas has also sparked significant reactions among ticket contenders. Senior Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation corporator Biranchi Narayan Mahasupakar said on Thursday that he would challenge senior minister Ashok Panda as an independent from the Ekamra-Bhubaneswar seat.