12 BJD leaders to ensure by poll win
Party Fields Naba Kishore's Daughter
- Bhubaneswar: The BJD on Friday assigned 12 senior leaders, including ministers and MLAs, as block observers for Jharsuguda by poll, where slain health minister Naba Das's doughnuts on a party ticket. Their prime roles are to plan at the micro- level, connect to voters and address their grievances with the help of workers at the grassroots for the May 10 byelection.
- They will work in coordination with senior leaders Debiprasad Mishra, Prasanna Acharya and Sarada Prasad Nayak, who were appointed as the Bobo'll for overall macro management, par ty sources said.
- The Jharsuguda assembly constituency comprises Jharsuguda municipality, Kirmira block, Lakiera block, Kulavira block and part of Jharsuguda block. The party has appointed Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak and Takumi Sahu as Kirmira block, Niranjan Pujari and Saroj Meher in Kulavira block, Padmanabh Behera and Arun Sahoo in Jharsuguda block, and Pratap Keshari Deb and Dibya Shankar Mishra have been named as observers for Lakiera block. The party has entrusted Pratap Jena, Puspendra Singh Deo, Snehan Gini Charia and Rita Sahu to act as observers in Jharsuguda municipality area. Altogether 2,21,070 electors, including 1,10,320 men and 1,10,687 women are eligible to cast their votes in the by poll. The voting will be conducted at 253 polling stations. Results will be announced on May 13.
- Appointment of the 15 senior leaders indicates that the BJD is out to mobilize its entire force in Jharsuguda to ensure the win of its candidate Dipali Das, daughter of slain minister Naba Kishore Das.
- While Naba Kishore had defeated BJPs Dinesh Kumar Jain by a margin of 45,700 votes in the 2019 assembly election, BJD exudes confidence that Dipali's winning margin would be much higher than her father in the ensuing by-election. BJP and Congress have not yet announced their nominees.
- BJD's organizational secretary Pranab Prakash Dash, some of the observers and Dipali held a meeting at Jharsuguda on Friday. We discussed our plan of action and execution. The senior leaders have been by guiding force. Seeing peoples support, we are confident of our victory, Dipali said.
- In a related development, chief electoral officer (CEO) Nikunja Bihari Dhal convened an all-party meeting with representatives of different political parties here on Friday. The political representatives were apprised of the schedule of the byelection and guidelines of the model code of conduct. The CEO urged the parties to cooperate with the election officials for smooth and violence-free conduct of the by Poll.