The nomination of Bishnu Das for the Rajya Sabha on Friday was greeted by the residents of Jagatsinghpur district. The BJD workers in a jubilant mood thronged streets soon after Das’s name for the Rajya Sabha seat was made public by BJD president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. They celebrated the moment by blasting crackers and distributing sweets in Jagatsinghpur town.
Similar celebrations among BJD sympathisers were also observed in the rural pockets such as Biridi, Naugaon, Jagatsinghpur, Balikuda and Kujanga areas. The five timer Jagatsinghpur MlA Das had lost last 2014 Assembly polls to Congress’s Chirnajeev Biswal by a slender margin of 2,888 votes. Since then he was not politically rehabilitated and had been performing as district BJD president. Das had courted controversy several times with his arch rival Minister Damodar Rout. Since long both senior leaders of the district had traded charges against each other and had hogged limelight regularly.
Meanwhile, Tirtol MlA Rajashree Mallick has developed bitter relationship with Das owing to her proximity with Rout. After Das’s defeat in the Assembly elections in 2014, political observers had predicted the former MlA would sit idle until next Assembly polls in 2019 but putting all speculations at rest, Patnaik trusted him and nominated him to the Rajya Sabha. Moreover, it is said that Das is in the good book of Patnaik despite his drubbing as the BJD head knows that intra party activities led to his defeat in 2014 polls. Furthermore, Das had started his political career as student leader and he became famous during the agitation in the wake of the infamous Chhabirani rape case in Beluakhai river bed. The Jagatsinghpur district was a bastion of Congress in1980.
He was first elected to Assembly in the year 1990 and elected five times as MlA of Jagatsinghpur seat till 2014 and recognised as BJD’s grassroots leader of coastal Jagatsinghpur district. He had served State School and Mass Education Minister for 13 months in the year 2006-07 in Patnaik Government. He later resigned owing to his son’s controversial HSC mark sheet scam issue.