Odisha is the country’s poorest State, but it has as many as 36 crorepati Netas in the fray in the current lok Sabha elections. And four of them possess assets worth Rs10 crore or more, as revealed in the affidavits filed by them before the Election Commission.
Pinaki Mishra, a lawyer-politician, who is seeking re-election as the BJD candidate from the Puri lok Sabha seat, is the richest one with total assets of Rs137 crore. This is about four and a half times more than his declared assets worth Rs29.69 crore in the 2009 polls.
Mishra is fighting the polls against the BJP’s Ashok Sahu (assets Rs5.26 crore) and Sucharita Mohanty of the Congress (Rs2.71 crore).Aama Odisha Party candidate in the Bhubaneswar lok Sabha seat Sanjay Hans, a prominent businessman who is simultaneously the party’s nominee for the Ekamra-Bhubaneswar constituency, is the second richest candidate with assets of Rs64 crore.
Hemendra Chandra Singh, who resigned from the Congress to fight as a BJD nominee from the Kandhamal lS seat, even surpasses industrialist-turned-BJD leader Baijayant Panda, who is again contesting from Kendrapada, in term of assets with as much as Rs46.07 crore against Panda’s Rs 29.84 crore. Panda had Rs17.75 crore worth of assets in 2009.The BJD’s Keonjhar lS candidate Sakuntala laguri has assets of Rs10 crore.
The Cuttack lok Sabha seat is witnessing a battle of three multi-crorepatis.Sitting BJD MP and party candidate Bhartruhari Mahtab, who has assets of Rs9.2 crore is pitted against Congress candidate cine star Aparajita Mohanty, whose assets are worth Rs2.78 crore.BJP nominee Samir Dey has an asset base of Rs1.97 crore. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Cuttack candidate Bikas Das has assets of Rs1.99 crore.
The Bhubaneswar Parliamentary constituency also has two other crorepati candidates, film actor Bijay Mohanty of the Congress (Rs1.74 crore) and sitting BJD MP Prasanna Patasani (Rs1.35 crore).Interestingly, the KBK region has thrown up eight crorepati candidates notwithstanding the fact that it is the country’s poorest region with more than two-thirds of its people living below poverty line.
In this region, the Balangir lS seat is witnessing a three-cornered contest among crorepatis. BJD sitting MP Kalikesh Narayan Singh Deo, who has assets worth Rs9.1 crore, is battling against the BJP’s Sangeeta Kumari Singh Deo (Rs6.23 crore). Both belong to the same local royal family. The other candidate is Sarat Pattanayak of the Congress (Rs4.38 crore).
The KBK region’s Koraput, Kalahandi and Nabarangpur lS seats have three crorepati candidates, two in Kalahandi and one in Nabarangpur. In Kalahandi, Arka Keshari Deo (BJD) has assets of Rs6.89 crore and his Congress rival and sitting MP Bhkata Charan Das Rs1.15 crore. In Nabarangpur, Balabhadra Majhi of the BJD and has assets of Rs3.27 crore.
The Kandhamal lS seat, while Hemendra Singh (BJD) has assets of Rs 46 crore, his Congress rival Harihar Karan has Rs9.62 crore.The Bargarh lS constituency has one crorepati candidate, Sanjay Bhoi of the Congress with assets of Rs2.57 crore.Other crorepati lS candidates are Union Minister Srikant Jena in Baleswar (Rs1.17 crore), Ashok Das in Jajpur (Rs1.43 crore), Tathagata Satpathy in Dhenkanal (Rs3.54 crore), Kulamani Samal in Jagatsinghpur (Rs2.51 crore), Hemanand Biswal (Rs2.01 crore), Jual Oram (Rs2.41 crore and Dilip Tirkey (Rs7.74 crore), all in Sidargarh, Nagendra Pradhan in Sambalpur (Rs1.23 crore), Siddhant Mohapatra (Rs1.65 crore) and Chandra Sekhar Sahu (Rs2.21 crore) in Btaahmapur.