suspense-lurks-over-new-cm-face-of-odisha

The Bharatiya Janata Party legislature party of Odisha will hold a meeting on Tuesday to elect the chief minister of the state and the new government will take oath the next day, a senior party leader said.

 

The BJP on June 4 secured a majority by winning 78 seats in the 147-member Odisha Assembly. However, the party is yet to choose a leader who will be at the helm of the state.

 

While the chance of senior Odisha MP Dharmendra Pradhan becoming the next chief minister of the state seems bleak after his induction into the Modi 3.0 government, the focus is now on Brajarajnagar MLA-elect Suresh Pujari, who returned from New Delhi on Monday. Besides Pujari, Sambit Patra, who has been elected from Puri, state BJP president Manmohan Samal are also in the race.

 

The BJP has appointed Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Bhupendra Yadav to oversee the selection of the new chief minister of Odisha, a senior leader said on Monday. 

 

Some of the probable names are:

 

Brajarajnagar MLA Suresh Pujari- He won the election from the Brajarajnagar with a margin of 26789 votes. Pujari defeated Alaka Mohanty of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) after getting 82,199 votes. He was also the MP of Bargarh from 2019 to 2024 and is the former state party president. Suresh Pujari was a national secretary of the Bhartiya Janata Party and represented the state of Odisha in the central committee of the BJP, chaired by National President Amit Shah.

 

MP Sambit Patra- He won the Puri Lok Sabha constituency. Patra has served as the national spokesperson of the BJP since 2014 and currently serving as a chairman in tourism department. Born in a Odia family, Patra’s first job was at Hindu Rao Hospital. He was appointed an independent director of the board of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) in 2017. He was also appointed as the Chairman of the India Tourism Development Corporation.

 

BJP state president Manmohan Samal- He holds a good reputation in front of the party high command. Samal joined the BJP in 1982. He hails from an RSS background, who was made the new president of the state unit in 1982. The next year, he was chosen as the president of BJP Mandal (Constituency Unit). The BJP chose him as a State Executive Member in 1984. In 1988, he became the State President Member.

 

Besides Pujari, Patra, Samal, KV Singh and Mohan Majhi are also emerging as strong contenders.

 

However, the BJP leadership might also spring a surprise as it had done in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh by announcing CMs, whose names had not been anticipated by political experts, a senior leader said recently.

 

The party has proposed to conduct a road show of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the state capital before the swearing-in ceremony on June 12.

 

The BJP also bagged 20 of 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state.