Bhubaneswar: As the Rajya Sabha election date gets closer, the political temperature in Odisha continues to rise; the state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has reportedly purchased 16 sets of nomination forms for the election to four seats.
MLAs of the saffron party namely Saroj Kumar Pradhan, Ashrit Pattanayak, Dusmanta Kumar Swain, Raghunath Jagadala and Pratap Chandra Nayak bought a total of 16 sets of nomination forms from the returning officer today. They purchased the nomination forms soon after the completion of legislative party meeting at Chief Minister Mohan Majhi’s residence in Bhubaneswar.
It is to be noted here that BJP has two sure-to-win seats. However, what is the reason behind the saffron party buying 16 sets of nomination papers and how many candidates it is going to field are yet to be known.
On Saturday, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) played a master stroke by fielding two Rajya Sabha candidates even though it has only one sure-to-win seat. While it named senior party leader Santrupt Misra as the first candidate for the third seat it fielded renowned doctor Datteswar Hota as the second candidate (common candidate) for the fourth seat.
Meanwhile, sources said that the saffron party will announce its candidates who will file their nominations after the parliamentary board takes a final decision in this regard.