Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik was on Sunday elected unopposed as the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president as there was, predictably, no other contender for the post. With this, he grabbed the post for the seventh time in a row.

The party’s election officer Pratap Keshari Deb made the formal announcement at the party headquarters here.

Besides, names of 80 State executive members of the party were also announced. The party’s organisational elections, a triennial affair, saw 33 new faces as members of the council.

“I thank all the BJD workers for their support,” Naveen said after the announcement, adding, “Our aim is to make Odisha self-respecting and developed. People have built confidence in our party for our continued fight against the historic negligence being meted out to Odisha. Our developmental programmes have touched the minds of the people.”

Notably, the organisational polls of BJD were held in five phases. The process reached the final stage with the filing of nominations for the post of president. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Bikram Keshari Arukh had filed the nomination papers on behalf of Naveen Patnaik on Friday.

The party had appointed district returning officers (DROs) for 32 organisational districts in December last year to start the process for party polls. While presidents for 29 organisational districts have been announced, presidents of three districts, Ganjam, Balangir and Sambalpur are yet to be named.

Patnaik is the founder-president of the BJD, which came into being after the death of Biju Patnaik in 1997.