Biju Janata Dal president and CM Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday inducted Soumya Ranjan Patnaik and Achyuta Samanta to the party…
CM Naveen Patnaik.
Biju Janata Dal president and CM Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday inducted Soumya Ranjan Patnaik and Achyuta Samanta to the party in the morning and by evening announced that the two along with Prasanta Nanda will be the Rajya Sabha candidates of the party for three vacancies.
The move to invite Patnaik and Samanta to join the party and almost simultaneously make them RS candidates dismayed quite a few aspiring longtime party leaders.
The Chief Minister said all Patnaik and Samanta will be assets to the party and are well known for their social work and capabilities. Patnaik, in turn, said it was a question of vision and ideology which made him join the BJD on Wednesday.
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He even tried to give it a sort of Biju Patnaik touch by claiming that 23 years ago he had been invited by Biju Patnaik to join his party.
Mr Samanta, the widely respected, social worker and founder of KIIT and KISS group of institutions, was making his debut in politics.
But he said it was easy for him since he was a social worker and will continue doing the same kind of work. There were speculations of Samanta being nominated to the Rajya Sabha a week ago.
But the CM’s statement that he will select ‘politicians’ had put an end to such talk. On Wednesday however the CM surprised all by announcing the candidature of Samanta. Interestingly, both Patnaik and Samanta have two Odia television channels.
In fact Mr Patnaik runs a TV channel, popular Odia daily newspaper, Radio and theatre groups, all of which put together have a unmatched wide reach which is said to be one of the reasons why the CM had opted to rope him in.
Mr S R Patnaik, a former MP, had been in the BJP before switching over to the Congress and subsequently forming his own Aam Odisha party to contest the 2014 elections without success.
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