Sambalpur set for high-profile contest as BJD pits Naveen Patnaik’s close aide against Dharmendra Pradhan

The nomination of Das, who is popularly known as Bobby, from Sambalpur came on expected lines after he was appointed as the district observer in March last year. BJD insiders then had said he was appointed as the party expected the BJP to field Pradhan from the seat.

Bobby is the de facto number two in the BJD and is seen as a close aide of Patnaik’s trusted aide V K Pandian, who has been involved in the party’s organisational works in Sambalpur over the past year.

Even as many see Bobby as an unconventional choice for the seat in western Odisha considering his identity as a prominent coastal face, BJD insiders said fielding him against Pradhan is a “well-thought out” strategy. The seat will go to polls in the sixth phase on May 25.

“Given Bobby’s clout in the party, all cadre will be mobilised for him, especially after the completion of the first two phases. Though the Lok Sabha fight will be a tough one, we do not want to lose out on Assembly seats. The BJP too will focus more on Pradhan, its most prominent face in the state and this will benefit us in other regions,” a senior BJD leader said, requesting anonymity.

Son of late Ashok Das, a popular Janata Dal leader of the 1990s, Bobby is a three-time legislator and is seen as a “good organiser and go-getter”. In 2019, Patnaik elevated Bobby to organisational secretary, a post which was specially created for him.

In 2019, the Patnaik-led party had won four of the seven Assembly seats falling under the Sambalpur seat, which is seen as a BJP stronghold, while the BJP had won the remaining three. The seat had witnessed a tough fight in the last Lok Sabha polls with the BJP candidate Ntesh Ganga Deb defeating the BJD’s Nilini Pradhan by just over 7,000 votes.

Pradhan, who last contested the Assembly elections from the Pallahara seat in 2009 and lost, is returning to electoral politics after a 15-year hiatus from a seat where the caste arithmetic, dominated by the OBC Chasa (farmer) community to which he belongs, is said to be in his favour.

Like it did in 2014, the BJD has fielded Hockey India president and former Indian hockey team captain Dilip Tirkey from Sundargarh, a Scheduled Tribe (ST)-reserved seat, to take on BJP candidate and former Union minister Jual Oram, who won the 2014 polls by a margin of just over 18,000 votes. Sundargarh is often referred to as the cradle of Indian hockey and has so far produced over 60 international players.

The Patnaik government, sources said, zeroed in on Tirkey based on the work it has done for the game, especially developing the world’s largest hockey stadium in Rourkela, hosting the Hockey World Cup last year and setting up astro turfs in all 17 blocks to ensure better training for players.

Meanwhile, Manmath Routray, the younger son of six-time Congress MLA Suresh Routray and a former commercial pilot, who joined the BJD on Wednesday, has been fielded by the party from Bhubaneswar, where he will take on BJP national spokesperson Aparajita Sarangi.

Bangiriposi MLA and state minister Sudam Marndi has been fielded by the BJD from the Lok Sabha Mayurbhanj seat while in Nabarangpur it has fielded former working president of Odisha Congress Pradeep Majhi, who won the seat in the 2009 polls.

In another list of six Lok Sabha candidates announced by Patnaik later in the day, the BJD nominated former Mumbai police commissioner Arup Patnaik as the party candidate for the Puri seat, thereby denying a ticket to lawyer-turned-politician and the party’s face in Delhi, Pinaki Mishra. The former top cop had lost to Sarangi in 2019 by over 20,000 votes, has been looking after the social welfare wing of the government – Odisha-Mo Parivar – and will face off against BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra.

The party has fielded new entrant and corporate honcho Santrupt Misra from Cuttack, where sitting MP Bhartuhari has switched to the BJP. Misra, who had earlier served as the director of human resources at the K M Birla-led conglomerate, opted for early retirement and joined the BJD last month.

Sitting MPs of Jagatsinghpur, Kandhamal and Jajpur have been renominated while Abinash Samal, a young doctor who joined the party recently, has been nominated from Dhenkanal.

For the Assembly seats, the ruling party has retained most of its sitting MLAs barring a few, where it has nominated close relatives of sitting legislators or swapped candidates.

Patnaik, who contested from Bijepur apart from his traditional seat of Hinjili in the 2019 Assembly polls, has been named only from his home turf this time.