Revolt in BJD: Denied ticket,party leader quits

Former union steel minister Braja Kishore Tripathy has resigned from the party,protesting against Patnaik's decision to drop him from candidate list.

The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) faced a mini revolt on Thursday night after the head of its Parliamentary Party and former union steel minister Braja Kishore Tripathy resigned from the party,protesting against party chief Naveen Patnaik’s decision to drop him from the candidate list for the Lok Sabha polls.

Tripathy,who reportedly does not get along with Naveen’s advisor Pyari Mohan Mohapatra,was expected to be renominated from Puri Lok Sabha constituency,which he has won for last three times in a row. But with Congress treasurer and former MP Pinaki Mishra joining the BJD,Naveen promptly nominated the Supreme Court lawyer for Puri seat over Tripathy. Pinaki is the second prominent Congressman after Orissa Youth Congress president Rohit Pujari to join the BJD.

The 62-year-old veteran leader quit the party along with Puri district BJD president Shankar Parida. “I have resigned as the chief of the BJD Parliamentary Party and also from the membership of the Lok Sabha. Though I was the chief of the Parliamentary Party,I was ignored while candidate selection for the Puri Lok Sabha constituency was on. The people of Orissa would give a befitting reply to the BJD’s undeomocratic step,” he said.

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Tripathy fuelled speculations of joining the BJP after he met party national president Rajnath Singh at a hotel in Bhubaneswar on Thursday night. But Tripathy himself denied the reports saying that he has not thought about his future steps.

BJP sources said that the party would nominate Tripathy from the Puri Lok Sabha seat if he joins it. A senior BJP leader said Tripathy’s joining the BJP would give the party a much-needed foothold in the key coastal district that has all along been a BJD bastion.

Naveen also denied tickets to 11 sitting legislators and another sitting MP Mohan Jena when he declared the party list for nine Lok Sabha seats and 67 Assembly seats.

In the new list,Naveen has retained several tainted names like Maheswar Mohanty,who was embroiled in a sexual harassment case during his tenure as Speaker of Orissa Assembly. Fearing a bigger revolt,Naveen gave tickets to old warhorses like Prafulla Ghadei,Kalindi Behera,Damodar Rout and Kalpataru Das.