Naveen Patnaik picks three senior BJD men for Rajya Sabha seats

BHUBANESWAR: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday named three senior Biju Janata Dal leaders as the ruling party’s candidates for the soon-to-be-vacant Rajya Sabha seats from the state.

Patnaik, who has often sent non-politicians to the Rajya Sabha — BJD’s current leader in the upper house of Parliament is a former hockey captain — picked partymen this time with an aim to strengthen the BJD before the panchayat elections, due next year.

Ending weeks of suspense and hectic lobbying, Patnaik named Bishnu Das, Prasanna Acharya and N Bhaskar Rao as the party nominees to replace Bhupinder Singh, Baishnab Parida and Patnaik's friend-turned-foe Pyarimohan Mohapatra, whose terms end on July 1.

Das, a lawyer by profession, was an MLA for five straight terms before he lost the election in in 2014. A senior party leader from Jagatsinghpur, he was of late engaged in a verbal spat with Damodar Rout, an outspoken state minister from the same area who has not shied from criticising his party colleagues.

Patnaik's former Finance Minister Acharya was a member of the 12th, 13th and 14th Lok Sabha from western Odisha’s Sambalpur constituency.

Rao, a powerful politician from Rayagada, is BJD’s state vice president and deputy chairman of the state planning board. Southern Odisha, where he comes from, hasn’t been represented in the RS for a few years and his nomination is expected to end that.

With 117 of the 147 seats in the Odisha assembly, the BJD is unlikely to face any hiccup in pushing its candidates through.