Ruling BJD is set to make a clean sweep by winning all four Rajya Sabha seats, the elections for which will be held on February 7.
Though the BJD is having the requisite numbers to win three of the four vacant seats on its own, yet to make announcement of the names of the official candidates, interestingly, party supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday endorsed the name of eminent sculptor Padma Bhushan Raghunath Mohapatra as an Independent candidate for the fourth seat. This seems to be a masterstroke of Patnaik to put pressure on the main Opposition Congress and BJP to support Mohapatra, deemed to be the fourth candidate of the BJD.
Trying to corner the fourth seat, Patnaik’s nice political stroke came after Mohapatra met him at the Naveen Nivas on Thursday evening. later, Mohapatra told mediapersons that that he would file nomination for the fourth slot for Rajya Sabha from Odisha as an Independent candidate.
“I had sought the support of the Chief Minister as an apolitical candidate for the sake of art,” Mohapatra said, seeking support of all political parties, including the BJP and the Congress. However, basically he will be a BJD man in garb of an Independent.
Though BJP national general secretary Dharmendra Pradhan earlier in the day had said that his party would support the Independent candidate for the fourth seat and urged Chief Minister Patnaik to take every one with him to nominate an eminent personality of the State, without paying any heed to BJP’s suggestion, Patnaik declared unilaterally BJD’s support to Mohapatra as an Independent candidate.
Meanwhile, according to highly placed sources in BJD, the Chief Minister has already finalised three names such as Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kalpataru Das, N Bhaskar Rao and Western Odisha Development Council chairperson Padmini Sekhar Deo as candidates for the Rajya Sabha seats.
However, a race in BJD for the ticket for the three Rajya Sabha seats is on as a dozen of senior leaders have made a bee line by giving their resumes. The four seats will fall vacant in March. With the ruling BJD having 108 MlAs it can send three persons to the Upper House with its own strength comfortably as it requires 30 first preference votes for each candidate.
Since with the remaining 18 votes, BJD can not venture to field any official candidate, it got the personality in the form of Mohapatra worthy for the fourth seat as an Independent.
Being a non-political person, he is likely to get the support of the BJP and the Congress.
On the other hand, the announcement of the BJD has come as shocker to all those aspirants, whose names were doing the rounds till date for the fourth Rajya Sabha seat. The important names include senior BJD leader Suendra Nayak, film personality Nilamadhab Panda, sand artist Sudarshan Patnaik and OCA secretary Ashirbad Behera.
For the main Opposition Congress, with only 27 members - three short of the first preferential vote to send a candidate of their choice for the fourth seat, it is a catch-22 situation. There are some serious candidates in the party in form of former Union Minister Kanhu Charan lenka, outgoing Rajya Sabha Member Rama Chandra Khuntia, OCA president Ranjib Biswal and Dolagobinda Pradhan. The Congress this time may not go for any fourth candidate as horse trading had marred its prospect last time.