Odisha: Congress candidate list cleared by PEC, sent to Delhi for final approval

Bhubaneswar: The candidate list for the coming Assembly and Lok Sabha elections was today cleared by the Pradesh Congress Election Committee and sent to the AICC screening committee for scrutiny.

Pradesh Congress Committee president Niranjan Patnaik said that the Pradesh Election Committee today cleared the candidate list for all 147 Assembly and 21 Lok Sabha seats of the state. The final list will be published after scrutiny and approval by the high command.

AICC Odisha in-charge Jitendra Singh, PCC president Niranjan Patnaik, senior party leaders of the state and PEC members were present at the meeting.

PCC working president Pradip Majhi said that priority was given to the recommendations  of the district level committees.

Party spokesperson Satya Prakash Nayak told the Odisha Sun Times that opinions were expressed at today’s meeting to give more representation to women and youth. However, winnability would be the main criterion.

Earlier, names of 44 candidates including all the sitting party MLAs and a few senior party leaders were cleared in the first phase.

Party insiders say that the candidate list cleared today bore the names of around two to three candidates for each of the constituencies. Now the ball  has been sent to the AICC court.

Heavy rush of party ticket aspirants was witnessed at the party’s state headquarters and the residence of PCC president Niranjan Patnaik and other senior leaders here for the last few days. Now the rush here is expected to be over as the nomination process has been shifted to Delhi.

Here is the list of the candidates for Lok Sabha seats:

1. Bhadrak-Ananta Prasad Sethi/Panchanan Mandal
2. Bargarh-Hemananda Biswal/Prakash Debta
3. Balasore- Nabajyoti Patnaik/Sudarshan Das
4. Cuttack-Panchanan Kanungo/ Suresh Mohapatra
5. Dhenkanal-KP Singh Deo/Ramchandra Khuntia/Santanu Kumar Sahu
6. Balangir-Smarendra Mishra/Laxman Kumar Meher
7. Kendrapara-Dahranidhara Naik/Tanmay Behura
8. Nabarangpur- Pradeep Majhi/Chandrasekhar Majhi
9. Koraput-Dambarudhar Ulka/ Akash Ulaka
10. Jagatsingpur- Bibhu Prasad Tarai/Prasahant Mallick
11. Sundergarh- George Tirkey/Prafulla Majhi
12. Berhampur-Tirupati Panigrahi/Trinath Behera
13. Puri-Satyaprakash Nayak/Biswa Ranjan Mohanty
14. Sambalpur- Sarat Patnaik/Amar Pradhan
15. Keonjhar-Haramahon Soren/Binita Majhi
16. Kalahandi- Bhakta Charan Das/Jagannath Patnaik
17. Kandhamal- Manoj Kumar Acharya/Chandra Sekhar Parida
18. Jajpur-Arjun Charan Dash/Manas Jena