With occasion president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday nominating Lekhasri Samantasunghar from Balasore, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha is once more set to subject 33% girls within the Lok Sabha elections.
On Worldwide Ladies’s Day (March 8) this yr, ex- bureaucrat and Naveen Patnaik’s trusted aide V Okay Pandian had assured girls staff that the occasion would proceed to order a 3rd of all Lok Sabha seats for girls in 2024.
The regional occasion has to this point nominated six girls out of the 20 names it has introduced for varied Lok Sabha seats. In addition to Lekhasri in Balasore, the occasion has fielded girls in Koraput, Aska, Jajpur, Balasore, Jagatsinghpur, Bhadrak and Bargarh. Compared, the principle opposition, the BJP, has fielded 4 girls on Odisha’s 21 seats.
The BJD — which had reached out to 22 nationwide and regional events in 2018 to construct a consensus for the passage of the ladies’s reservation Invoice, which was ultimately handed in 2023 — had fielded 33% girls candidates within the Lok Sabha for the primary time in 2019. Of its seven girls candidates, 5 had gained.
In panchayati raj establishments and concrete native our bodies, the BJD authorities had in 2012 already elevated the reservation for girls to 50%, from the 33% that had been carried out by his father and ex-CM Biju Patnaik within the early Nineties.
A former Zoology lecturer, Lekhasri had joined the BJP in 2014 and have become the face of the occasion’s Odisha unit on TV. Recognized to be a fierce critic of the Patnaik authorities, she caught eyeballs together with her common outburst in opposition to the BJD authorities on completely different points. She had even taken to the roads to steer the BJP’s protest in opposition to BJD heavyweights on completely different points.
On April 7, she introduced her resignation from the saffron occasion on X, blaming the state management for doing nothing. After quitting, Lekhasri mentioned that regardless of her sincerity and arduous work, she couldn’t earn the belief of the management, that there was nothing left for her to do within the saffron occasion.
“I specific my gratitude to the CM for nominating me for the Balasore seat. The CM has a imaginative and prescient for the state and I’ll attempt to give my 100% to take ahead the event agenda of the occasion and the state authorities,” mentioned Lekhasri, who just lately dumped the BJP to affix the Patnaik-led occasion.
Lekhasri is the second senior chief, after Bhrugu Baxipatra, to change from the BJP to the BJD in Odisha. Baxipatra is the BJD’s choose for Berhampur Lok Sabha seat. With Lekhasri, the variety of BJP and Congress turncoats within the occasion’s Lok Sabha candidate’s checklist has risen to eight.
The BJD on Thursday additionally introduced candidates for 9 Meeting segments, thereby clearing names for 117 of the 147 Meeting segments within the state, which can go for simultaneous polls. The occasion has to this point repeated most of its sitting MLAs, barring one seat, the place it has changed the sitting MLA together with his spouse.
Within the Sambalpur Meeting phase, the BJD has fielded veteran chief Prasanna Acharya in opposition to senior BJP chief Jaynarayan Mishra, the Chief of Opposition within the final state Meeting. Acharya’s nomination from Sambalpur assumes significance, because the Sambalpur Lok Sabha constituency is about for a high-profile combat between Union Schooling Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the BJD’s organisational secretary Pranab Prakash Das.
The occasion has additionally fielded 22 girls out of the 117 candidates introduced to this point, which is decrease than the occasion’s 33% inner reservation for Lok Sabha seats, though it’s an enchancment on 2019, when it had fielded 19 girls throughout 147 seats, 12 of whom had gained.